Girls in Years 10 and 11 take part in Public Speaking Competition

On Monday 28 January, one team of three Year 10 girls and one team of three Year 11 girls took part in the English Speaking Union's annual, and extremely challenging, Public Speaking Competition, held at the Perse Upper School. Each team consisted of one speaker, one chair and one questioner, with each role having its own rigorous demands and requirements. Supported by other committed members of the St Mary's Debating Club, the girls had spent the two months leading up to the competition researching, debating and preparing speeches on their allocated topics, "Words only have power if we give it to them" and "Positive discrimination harms minority groups". On the night, the teams were split up and then joined up with team members from other schools. Not only did the speech have to be delivered, but each participant had to think on her feet to ask and answer a range of questions on various topics, with the chair conducting, timing and leading the whole performance. The evening was a fabulous experience: both the Year 10 and the Year 11 team performed very well indeed, with our Year 10 speaker even getting a spontaneous round of applause from the audience for how she handled a difficult question! At the end of the evening, the regional organiser from ESU stated that he had never before hosted an evening so full of such high calibre in all areas. Whilst our teams were not selected to go through to the finals, the girls left the competition proud of their performance, with the Year 10s excited about trying again next year!