In the first of many more Lewisham Great Debate events, we had great success with six schools from the borough visiting SMA. This was a great opportunity for our young people to communicate and discuss many different aspects of their current experiences, needs and many more.

Two of our pupils had to say this:

Anayah Year 10: ‘Yesterday was a very different but fun experience. I am glad I got the opportunity to do the first ever Lewisham Debate and be so involved. I would do this again because of how exciting it was! It gave me a different view and aspect on today’s societal issues. I think it is a good way to get students opinions on nowadays societal issue as we are the upcoming generation and many of us do not watch the news. It’s a great way to show to us a career path to politics as well!’

Iona Year 7: ‘Overall, the day was a lot of fun and I liked how at the start of the event we played some games to get to know each other. The subjects for the debate were really fun to debate about in my opinion. I enjoyed using the laptop to study the subject and link facts and statistics to it; the large pieces of paper on the table made it a lot easier to plan our debate. The actual debate was really good as we got to say three main points and summarise it all at the end. The schools all voted fairly and everybody had a good time. As well as this everyone had a good amount of time to eat their lunch and have a break. It was really nice to see all of the schools chatting and playing together’.

Plans are already under way with the LYM team and we look forward to even more schools attending next year… will our vote change the discussion points next year?