By Meher G, Year 7

On Saturday 15th May 2021,  three teams representing NHEHS took part in the ‘GDST Summer Debating Tournament’, run by Michael Hepburn, which had a total of 44 teams taking part.

Those teams included:

NHEHS 1 (Iona H & Krisha S)

NHEHS 2 (myself & Sophia DJ)

NHEHS 3 (Dunya A & Ishita N)

It was from 9 am to 3:30pm and was a great experience for all keen debaters. The way it was organised was that all 44 teams joined together on Zoom at 9 o’clock and had to check in to ’TabbyCat’ where they would find out which breakout room, motion and side they were on.

The three motions that were competed were ‘THW allow parents to remove their children from certain classes on moral, religious or political grounds’, ‘THB that the feminist movement should oppose beauty and fashion industries’ and motion three which was ‘THW publish a government app that gives tax deductions to those with high social scores – social score=points based system giving points for eating healthy, taking public transport instead of your car etc..’. Everyone had 15 minutes to prepare for their debate with no internet searching allowed, which really challenged my mind and made me think on my feet.

What was great about this experience was that it was run in the British Parliament style, with the formation and time you get to prepare. It really showed me how much harder than I thought it was to do this, as if you didn’t understand the motion, you would be using your 15 minutes to try to understand it and not preparing notes, which would lead you to losing your round. The fact that there were three proper judges observing my speech, made it a little terrifying, but useful for future circumstances where many more judges would be listening and taking notes. Even if you strongly disagreed with the motion but were put into the side which agreed with it, you would still have to think of points for that side, which is much more difficult than it sounds. The struggle I found most hard surprisingly was trying to talk for five minutes as that is the time we had, so if I didn’t speak for that long, it would make me feel like my speech was too short, thus resulting in losing the round. I definitely gained more debating techniques from this competition, like to try and POI someone even if their speech is too short, also rebuttal is very important and analysis of the topic is key.

Overall, this competition was an amazing experience for my debating keen self and knowledge, and helped me a lot with tips to use in the future. It was very fun and many jokes were made, which made the time a lot more enjoyable.