In addition, Matthew Handley, a member of the debate team, won the coveted prize for ‘Best Individual’ debater in the North West Region – with the team of ‘individual judges’ concluding that he had demonstrated that he had ‘real depth and was theoretically engaged’ across the day. The team entered the Institute of Ideas Debating Matters Competition for the first time this year. After winning their local qualifying round in the autumn, students took their place in the Regional Final at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester to compete against five other schools, drawn from Greater Manchester, Lancashire, North Wales, Staffordshire and beyond. Up against overall winners of last years’ competition; Hutton Church of England Grammar School from Preston, amongst others, the team from St Francis Xavier’s were delighted to have won the place at the Regional, but held no expectations about winning.

When all of the schools in their stream won one debate each, the winning prize seemed to be hanging in the balance for the Merseyside team, with a tie-break situation declared by panel judges. Impressing judges with their triumph on the debate ‘Happiness is the business of government’, but losing narrowly in the debate ‘It would be better for new fossil fuel reserves to remain in the ground’ all schools had an equal chance to make it through. However, when asked to make a decision to decide the strongest team overall, all of the judges agreed that St Francis Xavier’s should be going through to the final debate of the day. In the final the team took on Hawarden High School from North Wales, successfully arguing against the motion ‘We should embrace the use of smart drugs’.

Teacher Claire Boughey, who has coached the Merseyside team to success, said of the day:

“Today has been great, and I am so proud of the team. Having never done this before I am astounded that they have done so well. What so impressed me was their ability to think on their feet and argue with the leading judges. The standard has been very high, which makes their win all the more impressive.”

Claire believes the team could go on to achieve great things at the three day National Final, which the students won a place to, alongside subscriptions to Encyclopaedia Britannica and £500 worth of Hodder Education books for their school.

Debaters Matthew Handley, Matthew Oldham, Jonathan Mitchel and Daniel Keeley were all blown away by the win, with Matthew Handley commenting:

“It has been a complete roller-coaster from start to finish. The judges give you a hard time, the audience give you a hard time, so we really had to sing for our supper. We are delighted though”.

Debating Matters is no ordinary debating competition. Renowned for being ‘the toughest debating competition in the country’ debaters were grilled by panels of expert judges. Judges included Richard Ritchie, Director of UK Government Affairs, BP; Jim Hancock, journalist and former BBC North West Editor; Rowena Burns, Chief Operating Officer, Bruntwood; Iain Brassington, Lecturer in Bioethics, SEP/ iSEI/ School of Law, University of Manchester. Melanie Knetsch, Deputy Head of Communications and Public Engagement Team at the Economic and Social Research Council said of the event:

“We believe that the key to creating a socially aware, thinking population is making debating and researching current affairs a fun and accessible activity - starting with our young people. We believe that Debating Matters encourages young people to address current issues from new angles and challenges them to think outside of their prescribed format. Congratulations to St Francis Xavier College, who the ESRC are proud to support in the North West.”

FURTHER HELP

Notes for Editors
1/ The North West and North Wales Regional Final of the Institute of Ideas Debating Matters Competition took place at Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, on 11th March 2011. This region of the competition is sponsored by Economic and Social Research Council For more information about the ESRC, visit: www.esrc.ac.uk
2/ The ESRC is the UK’s largest organisation for funding research on economic and social issues. They support independent, high quality research which has an impact on business, the public sector and the third sector. The ESRC’s total budget for 2010/11 is £218 million. At any one time they support over 4,000 researchers and postgraduate students in academic institutions and independent research institutes.
3/ Schools that took part in the final were: Hawarden High School, (Hawarden, North Wales); Hutton Church of England Grammar School (Preston); St Thomas More Catholic College (Staffordshire); St Francis Xavier’s College, (Liverpool); Ashton Sixth Form College (Ashton-under-Lyne); Urmston Grammar School (Greater Manchester).
3/ St Fracis Xavier’s College College received £500 worth of Hodder Education books. Runners up Hawarden High School won £250 worth of Hodder Education books and both receive a year’s online subscription to Encyclopaedia Britannica, as well as a year’s subscription to Total Politics Magazine.
4/ Full details of the programme for the day, including all the debate motions and topic guides, can be found here. For further information about the competition, go to www.debatingmatters.com. To interview students, teachers, judges and other participants, please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 020 7269 9232.

Notes for Photo Editors: St Francis Xavier students L-R: Jonathan Mitchell, Daniel Keeley, teacher Clare Boughey, Matthew Handley and Matthew Oldham.