Viewing archives for Debating & public speaking

Five of the nine boys on QE’s debating team for the national session of the European Youth Parliament have qualified for the international round of the competition.

The five were chosen after strong performances at the national session held over a long weekend at Liverpool Hope University.

Academic Enrichment Tutor Helen Davies said: “This was an excellent event at which our boys shone during formal debates that looked in some depth at the very diverse challenges facing Europe.”

They had reached the national event after previous success at the EYP South East forum, where they were chosen to go through, together with teams from two independent schools, St Paul’s and Guildford High.

The national session programme began with team-building activities on the first day, followed by the various committees forming resolutions on the Friday. At the General Assembly, held all day Saturday and on Sunday morning, the committees debated the resolutions.

The QE boys, all from the 2017-18 Year 12, were representing Italy, with the team even asked to bring along Italian food for themselves and their fellow competitors in the ‘Eurovillage’.

The team comprised Ibrahim Al-Hariri, Parth Gosalia, Shivam Masrani, Laurie Mathias, Aditya Ravindrakumar, Mipham Samten, Akshat Sharma, Anake Singh and Mudit Tulsianey. Ibrahim, Aditya, Mipham, Akshat and Anake all qualified for the international stages, which start next month.

The QE contributions included Mipham playing a key role in steering the Internal Market and Consumer Protection Committee, which was debating distributed ledger technology – databases that can securely record financial, physical or electronic assets for sharing across a network through entirely transparent updates of information. (The first incarnation of this was ‘Blockchain’, which underpinned digital cash systems such as Bitcoin, but it has now evolved.) In his final summation, which Miss Davies described as “very persuasive and engaging”, Mipham called on the committee to embrace, rather than fear, progress – we no longer ride horses to school, he pointed out! Such technologies should be regulated in a pragmatic, open-ended way that allows the technology to develop, he suggested.

For his part, Ibrahim gave an opening speech to the Committee on Security and Defence, which was debating the measures European nations should take to prevent the recruitment and radicalisation of terrorists. Among the points he raised were the importance of a lack of social inclusion as one of the biggest causes of radicalisation: people in prison are particularly vulnerable, he stated. Another group vulnerable to radicalisation is young people, since they are especially open to new ideas. It was, said Miss Davies, a “clear, well-structured speech which opened up the floor for an interesting debate”.

Other topics covered in the General Assembly session were European–Russian relations. Anake said European nations should recognise in their dealings with Russia that President Putin is becoming a dictator, showing similarities with Lenin and Stalin, and that consequently stronger sanctions on Russia were necessary.

With the recent media furore over Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, the topic of this year’s Elizabethan Union Dinner Debate held particular resonance.

The Old Elizabethans secured a decisive, although not totally one-sided, victory, as they and a pair of sixth-formers debated the motion: This House believes that in the digital age we should not expect our online activities to remain private.

Pupils Akshat Sharma and Tej Mehta put forward the motion for the 53rd annual debate, which was held on the day of the 445th anniversary of the founding of the School. It was opposed by Jonathan Hollingsworth, who opened, with support from Pravin Swamy (both OEs 2006-2013).

Headmaster Neil Enright said: “The debate itself was a typically lively and good-humoured affair. The whole event serves to help prepare boys for handling similar such formal, but social, occasions as they progress through university, their careers and life more broadly.”

Captain of the School Aashish Khimasia proposed the customary toasts to Her Majesty, the Queen, and The Pious Memory of Queen Elizabeth I, whilst Ross Lima (OE 1995-2002) proposed the toast to The Elizabethan Union.

Ross read Law at Sheffield and now works for Shell as Lead Legal Counsel for the sale of catalysts across large areas of the globe. In his speech, he reminisced about his first day at QE and meeting friends Laurence Burrows and Panicos Petrou, both of whom attended the dinner debate as his guests, along with Ross’s wife, Sarah. He remembered how the then-Headmaster, Eamonn Harris, told them to look around at the prefects: “He told us we were wearing the same blazers, but we hadn’t earned ours yet.” Looking at his Dinner Debate audience, Ross said: “You are now in the same position as those very boys that I looked up to on that day, and through your achievements at this School you have earned the right to wear that blazer.”

He spoke of the challenges the boys have already faced in their School careers and encouraged them to continue to seek out new challenges and opportunities, and to learn to overcome their fears.

The indicative vote at the outset indicated that the floor was leaning against the motion.

The debate began with Akshat putting forward the proposal. He and seconder Tej set out their case that it was, in fact, a reality that our online activities are not private – using state surveillance, as an example. They also argued the importance of being aware of how others use the data they hold, via social media or online gaming. They put forward the view that if people agree to the terms of surveys and ‘apps’ they use, then companies like Cambridge Analytica had, in law, not necessarily done anything wrong.

They also expounded the case for the positives of monitoring online activities, for the purposes of detecting and preventing crime and acts of terror.

The opposition countered these arguments, claiming the price of giving up our online privacy would be to give up part of our humanity, including our freedom of speech. Facebook came in for criticism, and the alumni said that even Mark Zuckerberg has now opined that such companies need regulating. They argued that people would not expect more traditional forms of communication – the Royal Mail or faxes, for example – to be open to others to view, so why should the internet be any different?

They also questioned whether the good citizens represented on the floor should be subjected to privacy breaches by the state in the name of security, advocating a higher threshold. They proposed a series of policy interventions to ensure better data protection online.

The floor debate saw enthusiastic contributions from Year 12 speakers and guests. These ranged from the question of how to monitor and deal with the terrorist threat, through to the different expectations there should be users in terms of the sharing of social media posts and messages between, on the one hand celebrities (and those who court social media attention) and, on the other, ordinary users. They also raised the already-strict financial and criminal penalties that exist for those who breach data laws.

The three-course meal started with leek and potato soup. There was a choice of main course between vegetarian tart and salmon, which was served with crushed new potatoes, green beans and tomato and basil sauce. Dessert was lemon and lime tart.

A team of senior QE boys have reached the national finals of a competition that involves mock criminal trials in a crown court in front of real judges.

The QE team performed strongly in three initial rounds at the regional finals of the Bar Mock Trial Competition, before emerging victorious from the final round, where they were pitted against the day’s other best-performing school, the Reach Academy.

After seeing off all 11 of the other shortlisted London state schools at the regional event at the Inner London Crown Court, they will now compete in the national finals at Cardiff Crown Court in March 2018.

English teacher Lucy Riseborough said: “The boys did extremely well and the judges commented on how well the ‘barristers’ in our cases performed.”

Each team comprised not only pupils playing the part of barristers, but also others needed to create a realistic court scene, from witnesses and jurors to court reporters and ushers.

The QE contingent prepared two different cases in the run-up to the event. One was a theft and fraud case involving a carer accused of stealing £1,320 from the man she was looking after. She used to do his shopping and claimed that she had accidentally taken his bank card home and had left it in a safe place. Since she lived with five other people, she argued that one of them could have accessed the card.

The second involved a charge of grievous bodily harm: a couple had an argument and the defendant broke his partner’s tibia. However, he claimed she threatened him with a knife and that he was acting in self-defence.

Teacher Tom Jack reported that the boys not only performed well, but also improved through each round, with third-round barristers Laurie Mathias and Mipham Samten learning from the judge’s feedback from the second round, when the QE barristers, Anake Singh and Saifullah Shah, had successfully prosecuted the same defendant.

“The two barristers therefore restricted their questioning to crucial facts, meaning that their closing argument was a mystery to the opposition until the very last moment. Confident performances from the witnesses for the defence (Hector Cooper and Viraj Mehta) put the prosecuting barristers under pressure, leading them to halt their questioning earlier than planned. By the time the jury retired, the result was just a formality; they found the defendant innocent on both charges.”

Having done so well in the three rounds, the boys knew they had a good chance of reaching the final, but were nevertheless excited and proud when this was confirmed.

“This achievement afforded the boys the opportunity to prosecute a case inside one of the main courtrooms, an experience nerve-wracking and enriching in equal measure.” The final round brought intense questioning on both sides and “a tangible impression of strategising from the respective barristers”, said Mr Jack, who teaches Music. “During the exchanges, the QE boys had to contend with one defence witness who clearly had the potential to intimidate the opposition and throw them off their game with her lengthy and convoluted responses. However, after neatly extracting the responses required from the ‘difficult customer’, Saifullah Shah’s closing statement tied up the various strands of the prosecution’s argument, leaving the jury to retire with a difficult decision.

“Although they were unable to reach a unanimous verdict, a majority decision narrowly found the defendant guilty, but the boys still needed the marks to go in their favour to claim a deserved victory. After deliberating for a good ten minutes, the judge returned with the news that the QE team had triumphed!”

The Bar Mock Trial Competition, which is open to young people aged 15-18, aims to give pupils insights into the justice system and encourages the development of skills such as logical reasoning, clear communication and teamwork. Now in its 26th year, the competition is run by the Citizenship Foundation and supported by the Bar Council of England and Wales, the Faculty of Advocates, the Bar Library of Northern Ireland, HM Courts & Tribunal Service, the Circuits and the Inns of Court.

The QE participants were as follows:

Barristers
Laurie Mathias, Year 12
Mipham Samten, Year 12
Saifullah Shah, Year 11
Anake Singh, Year 12

Jury
Alex Beard, Year 11
Nathan Chu, Year 12
Shivam Masrani, Year 12
Benjamin Suen, Year 12
Sajan Suganth, Year 11

Witnesses
Hector Cooper, Year 11
Kieran Dhrona, Year 11
Haider Jabir, Year 11
Viraj Mehta, Year 11

Court Clerk
Rivu Chowdhury, Year 11

Usher
Akram Ahmad, Year 11

Two sixth-formers have achieved success in the English Speaking Union’s prestigious Mace debating competition and now go through to the next round.

Akshat Sharma and Mipham Samten, both of Year 12, were chosen to represent the Elizabethan Union – QE’s senior debating society – for the first round of the Mace at Kingsbury High School, where they competed against leading schools such as Haberdashers’ Aske’s Boys’.

They won their places in the next round with their successful arguments in favour of the proposition, This house would add e-sports to the Olympic Games, in one of the four debates held during the evening.

Academic Enrichment Tutor and Geography teacher Helen Davies said Akshat got things off to a strong start with an “inspirational introduction”, which highlighted the 43 million online viewers who recently watched an e-sports tournament taking place in the US. In fact, Akshat pre-empted many of the opposition’s points before the first opposition speaker had even taken to the floor.

He acknowledged that to be included in the Olympics, e-sports would first have to be recognised as a sport by the International Olympic Committee and he therefore set out reasons why this should happen. E-sports fulfilled the IOC’s meritocratic ideals, since they were played at internet cafés by many people in less developed countries, with one poor Pakistani citizen recently winning an e-sports tournament (and netting prize money of $6.3m).

For his part, Mipham stressed the need to move with the times and overcome outdated, stereotypical views of e-sports participants as “overweight men playing games”. They were, on the contrary, true athletes and, furthermore, they would help attract younger generations of supporters for the Olympics, promoting Olympic values to a wider audience.

In his summing-up, Akshat strongly challenged some of the major arguments against the motion. He pointed to shooting as a precedent – an example of an Olympic sport that required accuracy and skill, rather than great physical fitness. He also had an answer for those who criticised e-sports as too “gory”, highlighting the aggression inherent in boxing and fencing.

Fifty pupils from Year 8 tested their debating skills under pressure during a visit to a leading girls’ school.

The QE boys joined an equal number of girls from The Henrietta Barnett School in Hampstead for the competitive debating symposium. After the motions to be debated were announced, the mixed groups of boys and girls then had just half-an-hour to research their topics before the debates started.

The motions included: This House believes the media does not have a right to intrude in the lives of public figures and This House would impose quotas for women in workplaces where they are under-represented.

The symposium was one of a regular series of academic enrichment events for Years 8-10 held jointly with HBS.

Nisha Mayer, QE’s Head of Academic Enrichment, said: “Students were very engaged and enthused throughout the morning. We lay great emphasis on the importance of developing oracy – the ability to communicate well using the spoken word. At events such as this symposium, pupils gain early exposure to the need to articulate their arguments. They learn to think on their feet and begin to appreciate the importance of keeping abreast of current affairs and societal issues – an interest that we seek to cultivate both during lesson time and in extra-curricular activities.

“Because of our single-sex environment at QE, there are also benefits for the boys in interacting and sharing ideas with peers from a girls’ school: we are very fortunate to have such a mutually advantageous partnership.”

After the initial debates in ‘break-out’ rooms, all 100 boys and girls joined together for the final, where the best six debaters did battle, each receiving certificates.

A QE team gave a strong performance in the second round of a prestigious debating competition, only narrowly missing out on a place in the regional final.

Mipham Samten and Akshat Sharma, both Year 12 pupils, received positive feedback from the English-Speaking Union adjudicators in the Schools’ Mace competition after proposing the motion: This House would allow upper-rate taxpayers to redirect a significant proportion of their taxes to charities of their choice.

In their debate at the event hosted by The St Marylebone CE School, the pair faced girls from Francis Holland School, Sloane Square – the independent school which eventually went on to the West London Regional Final.

Academic Enrichment Tutor and Geography teacher Helen Davies said: “The boys debated very strongly, but unfortunately only one of the six participating teams was able to progress to the next stage.”

The ESU Schools’ Mace is the oldest and largest debating competition for schools in England.

In detailed feedback, the judges said that Akshat had “excellent expression and delivery and had been able to bring in humour – difficult in an economic debate”. They also praised Mipham, saying that he had done well, particularly since he was a deputy, in using “good material”, with a “well-structured and sign-posted speech”.

The judges had stressed that the point of the competition was not necessarily to win the argument, but to present a detailed case and provoke an interesting debate.

QE debaters have reached the European Youth Parliament national finals after putting in an excellent performance at the South East regional round.

Eight Year 12 boys headed to the European Commission’s London building in Smith Square for the EYP South East forum, where they and teams from two independent schools – St Paul’s and Guildford High – were chosen to go through to the national event later in the year.

Congratulating the team on its success, Academic Enrichment Tutor Helen Davies said the jury had given them very positive feedback: “The boys worked exceptionally well as a group, having done their research well; they made interesting points, often bringing new lines of argument into the debate.”

The QE sixth-formers defended a Committee on Security and Defence (SEDE) resolution which proposed steps towards greater integration and co-operation between the armed forces of European Union countries.

The 40-minute debate began with an opening speech from Akshat Sharma in which he stressed that, in view of the aggression it faces from countries including Russia and North Korea, the EU needs both to increase its spending on defence and to improve the level of co-operation between EU countries, so that the increased funding is spent effectively.

His stance was duly opposed by a speaker from Haberdashers’ Aske’s Girls’ School, to which Mipham Samten then responded. After further debate, Mipham gave a summation of the QE team’s arguments: “Mipham put a great deal of work into the team’s preparation and gave a leading contribution,” Miss Davies said.

The subsequent vote on the resolution was 63 against, and 14 for; Miss Davies pointed out that, in fact, no resolutions were passed throughout the whole day.

After the debates, the jury provided general feedback to all the teams, praising them for their enthusiastic participation and their research.

As well as Akshat and Mipham, the team comprised: Ibrahim Al-Hariri; Parth Gosalia; Shivam Masrani; Laurie Mathias; Anake Singh and Mudit Tulsianey.

Boys from QE and pupils from a leading girls’ school had just 45 minutes to prepare for a special series of debates.

One hundred Ye ar 8 boys and five QE staff headed off to The Henrietta Barnett School for the afternoon of workshops chaired by the pupils themselves.

Academic Enrichment tutor Helen Davies said: “The purpose was to provide challenge for the students and put them in a situation where they were required to take academic risks.”

They therefore had to research debating points and evidence in the 45 minutes after they were given the topics, which were:

• • This house believes that creating new grammar schools, as proposed by the current government, is a good idea,

• • This house believes that friends are more important than family,

• • This house believes that students need more time to discuss religious and political beliefs in school, as part of the curriculum,

• • This house believes that secondary school students should have more choice in the subjects they study at school. 

The debates took place in four rooms and each was supervised by a member of staff and by an HBS sixth-former.

“The HBS sixth-formers worked very well with all the students and gave a short piece of feedback to every Year 8 student at the end of each debate, which was all thoughtful and constructive,” said Miss Davies.

Pupils engaged well in all the debates, Miss Davies said, with interesting points being raised from the floor. “QE and HBS students clearly enjoyed working together and sharing their ideas with students from another school.

“In debate 2, students brought up some interesting ideas to do with families which suffer from domestic abuse and child carers and, in debate 4, some interesting subjects were suggested that could be taught in a wider curriculum at secondary schools.”

At the end of the day, the best eight debaters overall were asked to prepare for a final debate – and this time they were given just 15 minutes to prepare. The debate took place in front of all the other pupils, with all of them “rising to the challenge very well”.

“The event was an excellent opportunity for our boys to interact with students from another school in a challenging but supportive environment, where they were required to develop and voice their own opinions. It is exciting to see our partnership with HBS expanding this year, so a greater number of boys are able to benefit from these types of events,” Miss Davies concluded.