North West Regional Debating Final, Manchester Grammar School

On Saturday 24^th February our Tarleton team took part in the North West Regional Debating Final at Manchester Grammar School. This was against tough opposition – Manchester Grammar School, Liverpool College, Urmston Grammar, Bolton School, King’s School, Chester, Wirral Girls’ Grammar, Winstanley College and others, with 32 teams taking part in total.

Our competitors, Benji (Year 8) and Lewis (Year 11), tackled motions such as ‘This House believes that the UK should be punished for leaving the EU’ and ‘This House believes that we should have a minimalist state’ demonstrating their ability to challenge their Year 12 competitors.

In the first debate following the Parliamentary style our team came 2^nd gaining 2 points; followed by 4^th in the second round; 3^rd in the 3^rd round and finally 2^nd in the final round – gaining a total of 5 points. This was an admirable and very respectable performance against very tough opposition. First place went to Manchester Grammar A team with 11 points, followed by Urmston Grammar with 8 points – they will be entered for the National Cambridge Union Debate later in the year.

For our first attempt at this style of debate we are extremely proud of what Benji and Lewis achieved in a quite gruelling day! They have learnt a huge amount about debating challenging topics with only fifteen minutes to prepare for each of the motions. Very well done!