A SCHOOL in Ryedale is celebrating success following victories by its students in debating and public speaking.

Students from Malton School, in Middlecave Road, have went through to the national finals of three separate and prestigious debating competitions to be held over the next three weeks.

This coming weekend Iona Spence and Laura Mackay travel to Oxford for the Oxford Union Schools’ Debating Competition Finals.

This is said to be one of the largest schools’ debating competition in the world with over 1,000 schools entering from five different continents.

Iona and Laura reached these finals last year and were placed 48th out of the 100 schools, meaning they were in the top five per cent of all the schools who entered the competition.

A 'privilege' to appear

A spokesperson for Malton School said Iona was “very aware how much of a privilege it was to appear in the Oxford Debating Chamber, a grand venue which has seen many influential people pass through its doors”.

The following weekend Iona and Laura travel to Cambridge for the Cambridge Union Schools’ Debating Competition finals for the first time, where teams also compete at a high level.

Debates continue on March 27 when Molly Ballam, Laura Mackay and Martha Johnson will take part in the national finals of the English Speaking Union Schools’ Mace competition to be held at Dartmouth House in London. 

For Martha, this will be her first national debating final.

The school spokesperson said “she is very much relishing the opportunity”.

Further success comes in public speaking where Sofia Jones, Josephine Hahn and Otto James-Bell have progressed through to the northern final of the English Speaking Union Public Speaking Competition to be held in York, on March 11.

'Exciting opportunity'

Otto described it as an ‘exciting opportunity’ and was also proud of the team’s accomplishments in reaching this stage.

Headteacher of Malton School, Rob Williams, coaches the school’s teams and credits their success to the creation of the school’s 'personal development activity time', which sees an an extended day on a Thursday.

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It has created space to build a wider public speaking and debating teams where older students support younger ones.

The next challenge for the school’s students, should they win one of these competitions, is to gain a place on the England team to compete in the World Finals - for which there are just four spaces.

Rob previously coached three students from two different schools in the 1990s to achieve this, including Amanda Pritchard who is now the chief executive officer of the NHS in England.

He said: “It would be amazing to see a Malton student achieve this accolade and gain a place on the national team for the world finals.”