News

English Speaking Union District Champions

3rd February 2010


The English Speaking Union district competition was held at Queen's College, Taunton. We had entered two teams comprising Alice Barnett, Hannah Law, Thomas Sankey, and Aaron Newbury, Adam Coppard with Tamsin Eddey. 

District Champions: Aaron, Adam and Thomas

Both teams fought valiantly against competitors from six other local schools. Our teams talked about, "Whether education is taking over from living" and "Whether mankind needs a religion".

We are delighted to announce that Tamsin won the award for Best Chairman of the evening with her calm and measured approach and careful organisation of  her team. Tom Sankey won the 'John Knott Memorial Plate' for Best Speaker for his talk on religion. Aaron Newbury was commended by the judges for his persistent, probing questioning, winning him the Best Overall Questioner award. Team members Aaron , Adam and Tom will now compete in the semi-finals of the competition on 6th March in Exeter.

This is not the first time The Park has had a student winning the Best Speaker award, two years ago Emily Mangles won it for her speech titled, "State intervention with civil liberties has gone too far".

Plate Winners: Thomas with Emily (who is now in our Sixth Form)

Once again we are enjoying success in the Public Speaking Competitions, at present we have two teams through to the Intermediate semi-finals next month.  We have another team through to the Senior final at Beaminster School later this month on February 9th.

January has been a most successful month the Public Speaking Club has ever had and congratulations must go to all the participants. They were a pleasure to work with and excellent representatives of the school.