Great Debate

Our culture of speaking out continues to thrive, as well as providing a cornerstone of our partnership and outreach activity.

This term alone, our top debaters have excelled at some of the biggest national and international competitions, making the finals of the Oxford and Cambridge Finals’ Days and being the only school to have two teams reach the Grand Final of Durham Schools last weekend.

But beyond South Hampstead, our award-winning Debate Hub programme has also encouraged almost 1000 students from over 50 other schools to find their voice this academic year. Our training and outreach programme has reached as far as Margate, Oxford and Nottingham, with popular after-school competitions providing opportunities for novice and well as more experienced debaters and public speakers. The response from partner schools has been overwhelmingly enthusiastic.

“A totally fabulous evening, so full of energy and vitality. The children thoroughly enjoyed themselves and found it a hugely valuable experience! ” –  Teacher at St Stephens

Our Debate Hub Director, Mr Hepburn, regularly visits partner schools to deliver workshops to teachers as well as students, enabling them to develop their own clubs, spars and events.

“Thank you so much for coming – the workshop really furthered the children’s understanding of debating, and I learnt so much as well!” – Teacher at The Orion School

To finish off a busy spring calendar of events, Debate Hub will host its first ever all-state debate competition with almost 200 Year 5 pupils visiting from over a dozen local primary schools, judged by our impressive Senior School debaters. Next term will see many more competitions, including a philosophy-themed event and two GDST competitions. We look forward to continuing to develop Debate Hub, providing many more schools with the resources and tools required to promote debating and public speaking themselves.

The Debate Hub programme is funded thanks to generous support from our community to our Speak Up, Speak Out fund. We are currently seeking corporate and individual sponsors for our outreach debating events; if you or your company would be interested in getting involved, please contact development@shhs.gdst.net