This term, the Bromley High debaters have been busy every Friday after school honing in our skills and attending various competitions around Kent, of which we have had many successes.

Our most recent competition was Cambridge schools which was held at Maidstone Grammar School and lasted the entire day. Some of the motions from the day included, ‘This house would ban prosecuting criminals who commit crimes out of economic necessity’ and ‘This house regrets the rise of tourism in the developing word’. Six girls from our Senior Debating team attended the competition (Sophia Bardon-Davis Lily Brock, Alice Lilley, Jahnvi Singh, Charlotte Bruce and Aimee Okeke) and debated a number of challenging motions against forty teams from across both Kent and London. We experienced a number of first place positions at this competition, with the debate captains coming in at 8th out of over 40 teams beating a number of strong sides from Sevenoaks, Dulwich and Kings.

Our year 10 debaters also enjoyed a day of debating at LSE Juniors with our novices Aimee Okekee and Grace Moore beating 33 other teams to be placed top of the leaderboard in the novice position. Indeed, so strong was their performance that they took part in the overall grand final – a fantastic achievement! Meanwhile Abigail Sewell, Elena Harley and Hannak Bekman came joint 13 out of 144 speakers.

But while our Senior Debaters are always excited to do a new debate every week and take part in external competitions, enthusiasm has also been growing within the younger years during Junior Debating Society. Students are always happy to share their ideas for new arguments and enjoy developing their style of speaking.

While these competitions all involved British Parliamentary style debating we have also had significant success with the ESU competitions. Our Schools Mace team are through to the regional after tough competition against Trinity School and our public speakers also did incredibly well at the English-Speaking Union Churchill Public Speaking competition, where they have moved through to the regional final, of which we are all very proud – a huge well done to Elena Harley (speaker), Amrit Kallar (chair) and Darcey Keegan (questioner).

Lily Brock and Sophia Bardon Davis, Senior Debate Captains