Congratulations to Tasha Dambacher and Ellie Gilbert-Bair who have qualified for the finals of the International Competition for Young Debaters, which is run jointly by Oxford and Cambridge.
Their success came at the regional final, in which all the Year 9 and Year 10 participants contributed to three debates on motions such as This House Would stop funding space exploration programmes and This House Would abolish university tuition fees, for which they had to prepare their arguments in 15 minutes with no reference to the internet.
For the regional final, Tasha and Elise had to argue against the motion that This House Believes That the state should take possession of all homes vacant for more than three months to house homeless people. They came second overall.
The finals will take place in the historic Oxford Union, which is where the first round was also held.
