Exeter’s black-tie dinner celebration of the ESU’s centenary focused heavily on the educational aims and transformational potential of the ESU’s core programmes, featuring alumni from public speaking and mace debating competitions as well past Walter Hines Page and SSE scholars.
The Director-General, Jane Easton (pictured, with Chairman Paul Waterworth), thanked branch volunteers for their support of the ESU’s charitable objectives and set out the ESU’s agenda for improved social mobility, particularly through the support of the oracy programme, Discover Debating, offered to primary school children in less-advantaged communities.
The evening’s guest speaker, Simon Horobin, Professor of English Language and Literature at Magdalen College, Oxford, and author of a number of books, including ‘Does Spelling Matter?’ gave an entertaining and compelling account of some of the current debates surrounding the teaching and learning of English.