{"id":794,"date":"2016-12-06T10:12:49","date_gmt":"2016-12-06T10:12:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/?p=794"},"modified":"2016-12-06T10:12:49","modified_gmt":"2016-12-06T10:12:49","slug":"794","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/12\/06\/794\/","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday evening I was at Denstone College (think Hogwarts in Staffordshire) to help judge a round of the English Speaking Union&#8217;s Churchill National Speaking Competition for Schools. The ESU\u00a0is &#8220;an international educational charity and membership organisation that brings together people of different languages and cultures in over 50 countries &#8230;[running] educational programmes, competitions and cultural exchanges to develop confident communicators, critical thinkers and empowered citizens.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/files\/2016\/12\/denstone.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-795\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/files\/2016\/12\/denstone-300x150.jpg\" alt=\"denstone\" width=\"300\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/338\/files\/sites\/338\/2016\/12\/denstone-300x150.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/338\/files\/sites\/338\/2016\/12\/denstone.jpg 500w, https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-content\/blogs.dir\/338\/files\/sites\/338\/2016\/12\/denstone-100x50.jpg 100w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>5 teams from 4 schools\u00a0spoke on and debated subjects as diverse as driver-less cars, the rights of the elderly, and civil rights and terrorism. The quality of the debate was spectacular, and I congratulate the winning team (from Repton School), the runners up (Denstone), the contributors whose achievements were recognised on the evening, and all the young people who took part. I had a great evening.<\/p>\n<h2><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Friday evening I was at Denstone College (think Hogwarts in Staffordshire) to help judge a round of the English Speaking Union&#8217;s Churchill National Speaking Competition for Schools. The ESU\u00a0is &#8220;an international educational charity and membership organisation that brings together &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/12\/06\/794\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":312,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3710],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-794","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/312"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=794"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":797,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/794\/revisions\/797"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=794"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=794"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=794"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}