Up For Debate Debating Competition

IPS hosted the South East England round of the 2018 Up For Debate Competition, run by The PixL Club in co-operation with The Noisy Classroom. Designed to help state schools develop their oracy programmes, the competition provided participant pupils and teachers will an excellent opportunity to exchange ideas and, together, to enjoy the competitive thrill of inter-school debate. 

Aims

The project was inspired by The PiXL Club’s desire to encourage the development of oracy programmes amongst its member schools. Competitive debating offers enormous benefits across the curriculum to all who practise it and this competition sought to provide schools with little previous experience of the activity with a positive and developmental environment in which to take their initial steps.

Background

IPS has a longstanding commitment to the promotion of debating in schools and is well-established as a national leader in the field. The Noisy Classroom, which was contracted by The PixL Club to run its competition, approached IPS as a potential London host for this eventgiven its strong track record in hosting similar events in recent years for, amongst others, The English Speaking Union.

Resources

IPS hosted the competition on a pro bono basis. Competition participants were able to use our state-of-the-art theatre and over 20 classrooms for the staging of the debates. A member of the School’sd Senior Management Team was on hand through the day to assist with the competition, as was our Theatre Technician, our catering team and a team of school keepers who ran a minibus service to and from our closest station.  Sixth Formers from IPS acted as debate adjudicators to supplement those supplied by The Noisy Classroom.

Impact

100% of respondents in the post-event evaluative questionnaire suggested that they had “enjoyed the day” and 97% said that they would recommend it to others. Teacher comments were similarly enthusiastic with many visitors remarking positively on the School’s hosting of the event.

Pupil Involvement

33 schools were involved, bringing with them 114 debaters (all drawn from Key Stage 4 classes), 64 observer pupils and 11 trainee judges. IPS provided a further team of Sixth Form adjudicators, all of whom had previous experience in debating and who were on hand to share their experience with the participant pupils.