Our impact
The goal of Debate Hub is for every school to be able to increase its oracy provision, and for every student to have the opportunity to learn to speak up and speak out.
Debate Hub is a partnership programme started by South Hampstead High School. We grew out of our commitment to giving young women a voice – and we haven’t stopped growing.
South Hampstead High School has a proud tradition of encouraging pupils to express their opinions. As our own culture of oracy grew, we found ourselves putting on more debating competitions and public speaking events for local partner schools. Now we support other schools to run their competitions across the UK, share resources, run workshops and continue to run our flagship events.
The opportunity to observe one of South Hamstead’s Debating Competitions in action gave myself and my colleague the knowledge and confidence to offer debating to our own Junior School pupils and to invite other local state primaries to join us on this journey. We were really inspired by the way South Hamstead’s older students were involved with delivering the day. Since our visit we have held a Junior Debating Immersion Day with four local primary schools to get us all started and invites are currently out for our first friendly competition.
Holly Preston, Sheffield Girls School