American School of London - 25th March 2026

It was wonderful to welcome so many new students to debating today. They were certainly quick to develop the confidence to speak out and it was fantastic seeing everyone participate in our warm up exercises and in the debate itself.

We discussed homework as a warm up, whether it helped us to learn, the amount set and alternative proposals. It was fascinating to hear their ideas and they structured their thoughts well.

We moved onto a seemingly light hearted discussion entitled ‘Is it ok to put whatever you like on a pizza? Is pineapple ever acceptable?!’ We actually could have turned this into a formal debate! Students had very firm opinions about food with a strong division between those who felt that you should eat what you like, and those who felt that fruit on savoury food is categorically wrong! This led to a discussion about the origins of national dishes and how these get adopted by other cultures. It was all very interesting but tummies started rumbling so we moved on!

Our debate this week was ‘This house would make it compulsory for top-level football players to make charitable donations.’ We widened this debate to include the top 1% of UK wealth. Everyone chose to come to the front to speak, which was just wonderful, and everyone spoke clearly and quite confidently. We had some challenging questions and I was impressed by the structured responses. 

This was a super start to the term and I look forward to lots more exciting discussions in the coming weeks.