By Miss Gordon, Public Speaking Co-Ordinator

We are delighted to announce that both NHEHS Teams have progressed to the Semi-Finals of the National English Speaking Union’s (ESU) Churchill Public Speaking Competition!  Our students made it through extremely stiff competition on February 8th and will be taking part in the semi-final at the highly prestigious Dartmouth House in Mayfair on 15th March. 

This is a fantastic achievement and (to my knowledge) a first for NHEHS to get through to this stage!

Huge congratulations to Shaan W (Chair), Elizabeth O’B (Speaker), Lewhat Y (Questioner) and Isie H (Chair), Bella P-M (Speaker) and Clemency G (Questioner).

We were represented by Divya K, Selena A and Yasmeen C in the second round of the ESU Mace National Competition on February 8th.  They narrowly missed out on making it through to the next round, but debated with eloquence, insight, and passion. They were congratulated by the judges and, perhaps due to a disagreement on the panel over opp rebuttal, were pipped by Harrow School. Thank you to Ms McLean for her ongoing support of our debaters and also to Mr Aaroe in the lead up to the event for helping the team with invaluable pointers on tackling rebuttal on the topic of MPs’ extra paid employment.

The GDST Chrystall Carter Public Speaking Prize Competition took place recently with Abbirami Y (Year 11) representing NHEHS. Abi spoke with such verve on the topic “Equality is too complex an issue to be attainable” – discerningly structuring her speech around Equality vs Equity. Her engaging ‘hook’ on shoes really brought the speech to life. She did not make it through but represented NHEHS with aplomb. A big thank you and congratulations also go to Lewhat Y who also went through all the preparation sessions, so that she might ‘step in’ if Abi was unavailable. Lewhat also tuned in during the event, to support Abi, which was lovely.

Coming up this half-term on the debating front we have the ICYD (International Competition for Young Debaters) run by the Oxford Union. Their first motion is: This house would ban academic streaming.

The Summer Term will see the return of the ever popular Model United Nations at NHEHS. 

Looking forward to these fun events as well as the ongoing Debating clubs at lunchtime!