On Friday 26 February 2016, Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School in St Albans hosted the final of the Three Catholic Schools Public Speaking Challenge, a new and exciting initiative. Teams from John Henry Newman Catholic School in Stevenage and St Michael’s Catholic High School in Watford were invited to compete. Three talented Sixth Form students were selected from each school and each had four minutes to speak on a topic of their choice in front of an audience of Year 12 students from Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School. Topics ranged from Donald Trump to racism, from the European Union referendum to social media.
Three local luminaries were invited to judge the competition: Member of Parliament for St Albans Anne Main; Monsignor Canon Harry Turner, Dean of St Albans; and Eve Millman, Director at recruitment company Tate and current Hertfordshire Business Person of the Year. The judges gave constructive feedback to each contestant, in what was an extremely high calibre field, and also scored them independently.
After all contestants had delivered their speeches, judges were asked to combine their scores to decide the overall winning team. In a fantastic result, Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School and John Henry Newman School came joint first, with the same number of points from the three judges. The overall winning team was decided by a tie breaker and the judges chose to award the Three Catholic Schools Public Speaking Challenge Shield to the team that included their overall favourite speaker: the John Henry Newman Catholic School.
It was an amazing competition which was supported by the Catenian Association and highlighted the talents of many of the young people in our schools today. The students from the three schools all spoke clearly and confidently about topics they felt passionate about. Staff and students from the respective schools were extremely proud of their achievement. Nicholas Breakspear Catholic School is now developing public speaking throughout the younger years in the school with internal competitions as well as challenging other local schools. We are also looking forward to the second Three Catholic Schools Public Speaking Challenge next year.
