Oxford Schools Debate

Last weekend, Napsugár and I participated in the national round of the Oxford Schools Debate. We won our first two rounds of debating and made it to the finals. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience as we thought that the motions were fascinating and unique.

One of our favourite motions was, “This house prefers a world where people are assigned employment based on a standardised aptitude test”. This motion was particularly clever as it was hypothetical, and therefore the debate turned very philosophical.

Even though the structure of the debate was very challenging - and our opponents were highly skilled debaters - we still genuinely enjoyed the sense of community and friendly competition which we got to experience. We both significantly improved on our analytical thinking skills, our teamwork and most importantly, our delivery and public speaking.

Having only 15 minutes to prepare for each speech, we certainly had to step out of our comfort zone and improvise a few times. All in all, we had a great time and would definitely consider entering again in the future!

Annamaria Wirtz
Year 10 Student