Oxford Debating Competition

With half term approaching, on the evening of Wednesday the 10th of February, St. Olave’s Year 12 Debating Society, run by Wren Welfare, proudly participated in The Oxford Schools Debating Competition. Four teams consisting of two individuals each covered two rounds of intense debates over Zoom against over forty other teams.

As the first motion was announced, “This House Believes the Media should not Report on the Private Lives of Politicians,” the eight individuals had to prepare a five-minute speech in under fifteen minutes, with no previous preparation and no access to outside knowledge. As difficult as it may seem, the students held their own, and managed to deliver truly impressive speeches to the judges and other teams they faced.

After an intense forty minutes of continuous debating, we were given our next motion, “This House Prefers a World where the Research, Writing and Teaching of History Focuses on Studying the Lives of Ordinary Individuals as Opposed to that of Important Leaders of Society,”. Everyone had to rack their brains for ideas as this motion was very specific and different to any we had encountered before, yet we all still managed to deliver strong speeches against the other teams.

After a long evening of debating, we all nervously awaited the final call as to which teams would proceed to the national rounds. We were delighted to find out that our second team, Martha Hodgson and myself, Gail Joshua Yip, broke through to nationals. We were immensely proud, especially as St. Olave’s was the only non-private school to do so, and are very much looking forward to competing again soon.

On behalf of the debating society as a whole, we would like to thank Wren Welfare for their continuous support and commitment to our improvement, with constant feedback that has helped us reach this point. We would also like to thank Miss Benham and Miss Clift for their support of the society and attendance during the competitions.

Lastly, a massive congratulations to Laura Gander and Alfie Holland, Zach Fischer and Tom Magee-Brown, Ebun Bello and Nils André, and of course my partner Martha Hodgson for participating and doing so well in our first competition, with hopefully many more to come!

Report by: Gail Joshua Yip, Yr 12