Author: Mo Lovatt

Students from six UK schools gathered in the iconic Grade I listed building, 55 Broadway, in heart of Westminster on Thursday 6 July to compete in the Debating Matters London Championship 2023.

Free Speech was the theme of the Debating Matters London Champions 2023 as six schools from across London and the Home Counties came together at the iconic Grade I listed building of 55 Broadway. Co-hosted with Blue Orchid Hospitality the championship took place on Thursday 6 July this year. Students debated a range of topics focused on 21st Century issues surrounding free speech and open debate. Aylesbury Grammar School, Harris Academy Chobham, Cardinal Newman Catholic School, The Grey Coat Hospital, Oundle School and Richmond upon Thames College took part in a series of high-quality debates throughout the day. Judges from a range of sectors including Law & Politics, Art & the Media, Health, Sport and Education asked a series of pertinent questions of the students and pushed them to find their best argument.

Continue reading “Aylesbury Grammar School wins the Debating Matters London Championship 2023!”

While school pupils are being admonished for ‘wrong-think’, Debating Matters provides a vital corrective: free, open and frank debate.

This news item was originally written as a guest post for the Academy of Ideas substack.

Earlier this year, when Debating Matters launched the 20 for 20 programme to celebrate its twentieth anniversary, the idea was to raise our profile, post-Covid, after a sustained period in which school debate had been severely restricted. We are now in full swing, having delivered 10 out of the 20 events so far.

Schools debating is precious and worth supporting. In the USA, however, it is under threat from cancel culture – and we cannot let that happen here.

Continue reading “Cancel culture comes for debate in schools”

On Thursday 8 June Durham Union Society will play host to the Debating Matters Durham Championship 2023. Students from North East schools will come together for a day of intense but thrilling debate as they take on issues such as, “Billionaires owning media companies is bad for democracy” and “Cancel Culture is a threat to freedom of speech”.

Continue reading “Durham Union Society to host the Debating Matters Durham Championship 2023”

Students from four UK schools gathered in the heart of Westminster on Friday 10 March to compete in the Debating Matters House of Lords Championship 2023. And what an inspiring day of debate it was!

The Burgate School took on competitors from three other schools and faced tough questions from judges and audience members to emerge as winners of the DM House of Lords Championship. 

Continue reading “The Burgate School wins the Debating Matters House of Lords Championship 2023!”

From Gujurat to Leeds… DM has been inspiring young people around the globe!

Debating Matters’ reach has extended further than Europe in the last two years. In 2020, former director of DM and current curriculum manager for Mathematics at MidKent College, Tony Gilland, developed a highly successful new pilot debating tournament – DMGBIN – for 16- to 18-year- old students in India and the UK which was inspired by his work at Debating Matters.

Continue reading “Inspired by Debating Matters”

As Debating Matters returns from yet another fantastic championship in Berlin, we asked our lead German partner, Sabine Beppler-Spahl, what inspired her to bring the championship to Berlin.

“As chair of the Freiblickinstitute, whose purpose is to organise public discussion on political and scientific issues, I felt the chance to host Debating Matters in Berlin was an opportunity not to be missed! Although Britain has a long tradition of schools debates, in Germany debating societies are not as well established.  But there is taste for serious, content-based debating in this country too!

Continue reading “Sabine Beppler-Spahl: on launching Debating Matters in Berlin”

An enthusiastic and well-researched team from Nelson-Mandela-Schule saw off competition from seven other Berlin schools this year to emerge as victors in the Debating Matters Berlin Championship 2022.

The team competed in three group-stage debates and, in the final, took on fellow group-stage winners Schadow-Gymnasium to argue against the motion “Tech companies should act to stop online misinformation”. Both teams were well-prepared and argued passionately for their side of the motion. That meant the panel of judges – Professor Stefan Chatrath, Professor Oleg Dik and DM alumnus Julia Dannemann-Freitag – had a tough job on their hands coming to a final decision! However, Nelson-Mandela-Schule eventually emerged victorious, rounding off an intellectually thrilling day of debate organised by Freiblickinstitut and hosted by University of Europe for Applied Sciences (UE) on its Berlin Campus.

Continue reading “Nelson-Mandela-Schule emerge victorious at the Debating Matters Berlin Championship 2022”

We’re delighted to announce that Debating Matters is returning to Berlin – live and in person, for our seventh DM Berlin championship.

On Thursday 16 June, during a full day of lively debates, eight Berlin schools will battle it out to become Debating Matters Berlin 2022 Champions. Along the way, teams will have to tackle such issues as whether technical progress can solve our environmental problems, whether Western museums should repatriate their cultural artefacts and if UBI can solve our economic and social problems.  The group stages will culminate in the winners of each group taking on the topic, Tech companies should act to stop online misinformation in the grand final.

Continue reading “Announcing the Debating Matters Berlin 2022 Championship!”