By Ms Melanie Hirst, Secondary School Teacher

Congratulations to one of our Junior Debating teams (Radford 1) who were declared the winners of this season’s ACT Debating Union Junior competition. This competition attracts participants from schools across the region. This season, 42 teams comprising of students in Years 7 and 8 competed in the Junior division of the competition.

The team secured their grand final victory against a formidable Canberra Girls’ Grammar School team debating the topic ‘that we prefer a world where anonymity on the internet was not an option,’ for the affirmative. The team comprised of Year 8 students Amber, Nara, Dinugi, Sanvi and Rachel. They were declared the winners of this season’s ACT Debating Union Junior competition.

We congratulate them on a fabulous achievement. A special mention to Nara, who was also awarded the best speaker in the grand final. The future of Radford debating looks bright with such great results in the Junior competition.

Well done to our 2 Advanced teams and one of our other Junior teams, Radford 3, who also had a stellar season. All 3 of these teams progressed to the semi final round of the competition and narrowly missed out on a spot in the grand final.

A big thank you to the coaches who supported our teams this season and have nurtured students' skills with enthusiasm and their love of a well-executed argument!