ESU Churchill Public Speaking Competition – London Regional Final

Last week, Christy Forshaw, Tara Alpsu, and Sofia Waas-Perumal took part in the London regional final of the English Speaking Union’s Churchill Public Speaking Competition. They took on the roles of Speaker, Chair, and Questioner respectively and performed in front of a packed audience at Dartmouth House in Mayfair. While they did not break into the National Final, they performed exceptionally well and Christy won the much coveted Best Speaker prize for her speech entitled’A good story is more persuasive than a rational argument’.

International Competition for Young Debaters

Last weekend, six members of the Putney Debating Society spent the day at Whitgift School in Croydon participating in the International Competition for Young Debaters (ICYD) which is open to students in Year 10 and below. In teams of two, the girls participated in British Parliamentary style debates judged by students from the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. Of the 80 students scored at the competition, four Putney girls were in the top 20, two of them in the top 10, and one in the top five. Govhar Dadashova and Sofia Waas-Perumal were one of the teams which’broke’ and will now proceed to finals day at the Oxford Union in April.