St Philip's School - 10th February 2026

The St Philip’s group has continued to make tremendous progress this first half of term. On skills this week we focussed on rebuttal, linking this with active listening and the importance of speaking with conviction of our previous week, as well as key body language skills.

Our warm-up questions included:

·         ‘If you could write a book, what would it be about and why?’ (detective fiction, the world of magic – Harry Potter/Tolkien, action books, books focussed on nature and sporting biography all received reference)

Our newsround took in the Winter Olympics, the T20 Cricket World Cup, the Six Nations, US-Iran negotiations, the PMs struggles, and further Flood warnings across the UK.  

Debating motions/questions included:

·         ‘Do we value art correctly?’

·         ‘Do we need another Gruffalo book?’

·         ‘This House would merge the summer and winter Olympics’

·         ‘Should we still learn Latin and Ancient Greek?’

Very well done to all with the sophisticated way in which the group tackled each motion with nuanced argumentation throughout and attentive listening to opposition/proposition viewpoints.