History? Well that's debatable!

The Great Debate is a public speaking competition organised by the Historical Association and sponsored by Rayburn Tours where students have 5 minutes to present their speech arguing their answer to the question.

The competition for this year is: How important are personal and public records as evidence for explaining the story, or stories, of your local area?

Evidence of the past can take on many forms; some of it is formal (birth certificates, government records etc); some might be physical structures (e.g. buildings, planted woods) and some of it informal - diaries, postcards, ephemera and letters. Historians researching a topic, person or event will often use a combination of these pieces of evidence to construct an understanding of the past. 

To answer the Great Debate question for this year, students were asked to explain how they sought their evidence and sources they used to support their argument to address the importance of personal and, or public records as evidence for explaining local history.

The judges for the heat held at Barnhill on 5th December were Dr Peter Hounsell and Phillip Woods from the Ealing branch of the Historical Association who heard from 7 participants including Venka, Hansini, Maryama, Ayesha and Samriddhi from Barnhill and Carolina and India from other local schools.

Samriddhi impressed the most with her compelling argument and will go through to the next round.