Royal School, Armagh

The Senior Society has been actively involved in a wide range of competitions during the autumn term. Having been awarded ‘Team of the Year’ at the final of the prestigious Northern Ireland Schools’ Competition last season, the senior debaters were keen to try their skills in variety of formats.

Two of our senior speakers travelled to Stormont again in October, to take part in the Edgar Graham Memorial Public Speaking Competition. Four Year 12 students took part in the annual Soroptimists Public Speaking Competition. Up against a strong field of award-winning public speakers, they committed themselves very well.

An invitation to take part in ‘Debating Science Issues’ resulted in an interactive workshop on developments in stem cell and gene therapies. Two of our debaters will challenge on this topic later in the year.

We again applied to take part in ‘Debating Matters’ and on Dec 7th our teams successfully defended their Northern Ireland -Belfast Region title. This means that, for the second year in a row, we will be travelling to Edinburgh to take in the Regional Final against the winning Scottish schools.

This year’s Northern Ireland Schools’ Competition started in fine style with a win. We hosted Lurgan College and proposed that Northern Ireland was NOT a green and pleasant land. Ms Victoria Armstrong and Mr James Heatley then took on RBAI at Inst on the motion that to deny the NHS private sector funding is outdated. We won.

Members are now looking forward to the next stage of this year’s competitions. We wish them every success as they continue the quest for debating laurels.