OBAMA OUT: Barack Obama finished his presidency with an epic Mic drop!

Public speaking is a life skill - whether it be delivering a TED talk to a worldwide audience or a best man's speech for a friend at a wedding. Whether you love or loathe being in the limelight, it is worth getting experience while you are still young. It is very much a skill rather than just a God given talent!

There are opportunities for you to improve your public speaking in many of our programmes of study. For example, in Year 8, you can give a class presentation on your experience of a role model; in Year 9, you learn about rhetoric and can participate in class debates (as well as the school competition itself). 

In Year 10 and Year 12, there is the opportunity to undertake trials for the Youth Speaks team. This could see you travel to the UK for further district and regional rounds. In 2019, our intermediate team (Joseph Tom, Oliver Connolly, Max Guilbert) progressed through the Southampton round and competed in the South West region for a place in the national final.

Below you can read some of the regulations for the intermediate debating competition and some of the guidelines for Youth Speaks: