On 19th January 2017 Glenthorne High took part in the Jack Petchey speak out challenge. The speak out challenge is the worlds biggest speaking challenge in the world where youth compete to find the best speaker. The prize for the winning the grand final is a £2,000 trust bond and £3,000 for the winning school.

The first round of this challenge takes place in school. A public speaking trainer comes to your school and leads a workshop. The workshop begins with a trust exercise. In this exercise the workshop leader, this case Chris, placed him self in a very vulnerable position by enabling the students to ask him anything they want. In my workshop the question’s ranged from “best experience” to “how many girlfriends do you have?” according to Chris, our workshop leader, this exercise enables the workshop leader to gain the trust of his audience. Well no matter what the reason is, its serious fun!

Then you move on to actually starting to speak. Everyone is divided into random groups. Each person in the group needs to tell a story to their group. This story must have some kind of message in it.

Then we all had to start planning our main speech. You could do your speech on anything. From racism and bullying to why you love food. At the end of the session three people who did the best were chosen by two judges, a English teacher and Chris, to go through to the regional finals.

I decided to go and find out what peoples views were on the workshop. One participant had a strong opinion the day:” it was a fun day. I really enjoyed it but I just think that the 3 finalists chosen were chosen because the judges felt sympathetic and they were biased” according to this participant the judging was done unfairly and she wasn’t the only one to feel this way.

All students were judged on content, delivery and structure. This is the same judging criteria used for the “Speak Out” Challenge! regional finals, the semi final and the grand final.

But just because some people think that the judges were biased, does it mean that they were really biased or was it just bad sportsmanship? What do you think?

Asim Ahmed

Glenthorne High School