We are looking forward to the first heats of the Cicero Cup next week. They are being hosted at Ibstock Place School and eight teams will debate for the chance to go through to the finals.
All the teams will debate one prepared motion – either on abolishing the monarchy or on sending humans to space. They will also face the bigger challenge of an impromptu debate where they will find out the topic just twenty minutes before the debate starts.
Many of the schools have already had a debate workshop from a Noisy Classroom trainer as part of the programme, and they have all had our new debate resource booklet and access to staff training, so we expect the standard of debate to be high, despite the fact that most of the pupils are beginners.
Watch this space for the results!