On Tuesday 6th December, Katherine Warington School took two teams to the local Senior, Rotary Youth Speaks Competition.

Youth Speaks is a public speaking competition in which a team need to prepare a debate and develop a 15 minute presentation for their audience.

Rayan P, Fahtima A and Becky D formed a team that chose to debate whether it is right to ‘Respect Your Elders.’ They put forward interesting debates about who deserves respect and also considered whether teaching young people to trust adults blindly is really the safest thing to do. They offered a unique perspective on this topic and worked beautifully as a team.

Freddie C, Cuan P and Harry H chose to consider a different topic, ‘Free Speech is a Fallacy in Modern Day Society.’ They put forward sophisticated arguments about the role cancel culture has to play in policing opinion and also considered how social media makes this a particularly complex topic. All performers were incredibly strong and I would like to congratulate Freddie on making incredible progress with his performance skills.

Both performances engaged the audience well. These teams both applied to Youth Speaks last year and the improvement in their performance skills has been exceptional.

Well done to Cuan, Freddie and Harry for taking the win! We wish you well in the District Finals in February.

A big thank you to Miss Ryman for her support of the team.

Mrs Aikman