Ties and suits on, a group of nine Y12 students left the College at 7.45am last Wednesday to visit Oratory PrepSchool, in Reading, where they were invited to monitor and judge a Debating Competition.

The debaters were Year 5 and Year 6 pupils, who travelled from 10 schools across the country and came together for “The Bellevue Group Debating Competition”. Our students covered the roles of judges, chairs and timekeepers. 

We interviewed Solomon, otherwise known as Sisi, to find out more about the event and how this opportunity enriched them as individuals. 

Sisi, thanks for accepting to have a chat about the Bellevue Debating Competition. Could you give us a quick overview of the day you spent at Oratory Prep School?

Yes, of course. We were a group of nine students from EIC, all very formally dressed, who travelled together to Reading on that day. 

After a short “welcome snack” at our arrival, we were divided into different rooms, where Y5 and Y6 students would confront each other through structured debates. 

The teams were formed by three primary school pupils, in which the first two speakers would expose their arguments, and the third would give a summary of all the points exposed.

Sixth Form Students were there in the quality of judges, chairs and timekeepers. 

Could you tell us more about these roles and specifically what they included?

The Chairs would introduce the topic of the debate, introduce the teams and prompt them to start. 

The timekeepers needed to stop the speakers when their time reached the limit allowed, and notify them of when they only had one last minute left to conclude their speech. 

The Judges were put in teams that would follow different debates in different rooms. The teams included mixed students from all secondary schools of the Bellevue Group. 

What topics were the pupils debating on? And what criteria were they judged on? 

The topics were extremely varied. The debates I assisted were about the possibility of closing zoos, the idea of everyone becoming vegetarian, and the hypothesis that we should all have robots in our homes. 

We were told to give the debaters a score from 1 to 10 based on four criteria: the style of the presentation, the organisation of the speech, the content itself, and their response to the opposite team. 

How were you selected amongst other EIC students to become a “judge-for-a-day”? And how were students from Ealing Independent College prepared for the event? 

I volunteered to join this debating program, as it sounded like an interesting opportunity. Allan, our Principal, informed us of a training day that all the Sixth Form students from all Bellevue Schools who signed up to monitor the Competition needed to attend before the main event. Thus, we all travelled to Bellevue Headquarters near Waterloo to attend the Training Day, where we were taken through a PowerPoint presentation that gave us an overview of what the main competition was going to be like. Also, on that day we simulated a debate by pretending to be the debaters, in order to better understand the challenges that the speakers would face. It was fun, and also beneficial. 

Do you think the debating competition had a positive impact on you? Has it enriched your skills? And if so, how could you apply the skills you have acquired to your lessons? 

I certainly think that assisting these debates has improved our way of exposing our ideas and opinions to others. After learning the structure that helps debaters proclaim their arguments, I understood that this could be used in our everyday life conversations, especially in class, any time I am asked to share my views. 

Also, I learnt an impressive amount of new words from the Y5s and 6s; they used connectors that I would not normally use in my writing. Therefore, this experience will definitely help me write my essays more effectively. 

Excellent! Are there any other similar events coming up, and if so, would you be willing to join in? 

I think there won’t be any other Debating Competition for the next few months to come, but I would definitely volunteer again to join the next event organised by Bellevue Education.