Lower Sixth prove ‘Debating Matters’ at Oxfordshire Championship

For two years now, Leighton Park has established its roots, raised a profile and begun to build a reputation in the world of debating.

This has been achieved through hobbies and the first Inter House Debate competition organised by Chris Tyer, with the School entering two external competitions. It is my great pleasure to be able to report back a recent achievement.

On Thursday 27th June, the Leighton Park Lower Sixth debating team travelled to Oxford to compete in the Oxfordshire Championship of the ‘Debating Matters’ national competition. Debating Matters is an incredibly tough competition where students not only have to prepare well researched speeches, adapt and improvise summary statements, but also convince judges of their argument. The judges are professional people from academia and business and volunteer their time to hear young people present, debate and give feedback to help develop the next generation of leaders and intellectuals. However, they make the experience rather akin to Dragons Den.

The finals took place in the famous debating chamber of the Oxford University Union – what a venue, the birthplace of countless political careers, and a few more future politicians certainly showed their potential during the course of the day!  I think it is important to know that for Drin, Anton, Ahmer and Letitia, this was their first competition against other schools, and Joe competed in two debates.

The team competed in three very challenging debates: Joe and Drin convinced the judges that their arguments against the motion “Western museums should repatriate cultural artefacts’ were the strongest in the first debate, whilst Anton and Shaun narrowly missed out against our old rivals John Hampden Grammar School, arguing against the motion that “Tourism benefits the world”. Adriana and Ahmer’s final debate in the group stages, particularly a stellar performance by Adriana that earned her an ‘Honorable Mention’ in the overall rankings, convinced the judges that “Childhood vaccinations should be compulsory”. Indeed, Adriana and Ahmer were referred to as the ‘senior team’ and their opposition the ‘junior team’, ouch! The team’s strength as a whole won us through a tie brake decision to the final debate.

The final was an astonishing display of intellectual argument and required extraordinary resilience: Joe and Letitia rose to the enormous challenge admirably and put in a very strong argument that “Populism is a threat to democracy”. Both performed at an extremely high level and were credited by the judges for their excellent achievements, particularly Joe’s resounding response to a vitriolic audience member who accused him of falling for anti-Brexit stereotypes. The judges took a long time to come to their decision, and it was only by the narrowest of margins that they declared in favour of our opposition.

The team deserve enormous credit for their thorough preparation and superb performances against competition of the highest level. All of the students have gained a huge amount of experience of pushing their personal boundaries and testing their stamina and resilience that will help them with their next aspirational steps and beyond as so many professions need these skills. These are skills you can only learn by doing and all the students have learned so much by throwing themselves in with a passion for debating and produced perhaps their finest piece of work this year.  Credit should also go to David Hammond, Chris Tyer and the team of staff who helped to prepare the students; Jenny and Paulo had a thoroughly enjoyable day cheering on the team. The day was an experience to remember for everyone: Westminster, Leighton Park is coming!