For the second year running, Radley College has won the ESU Schools’ Mace
Radley College, Oxfordshire, has been named the winner of the ESU Schools’ Mace debating competition for the second year in a row. Blake Williams, Mikolaj Rutka and DingDing Zhou from Radley College beat 11 other semi-finalist teams at Dartmouth House, London, on Wednesday, 30 April – the culmination of a contest which has featured over 100 heats in which over 1,500 young people have taken part. Worthy runners-up were Bristol Cathedral Choir School, who ably proposed the motion ‘This House Believes that AI-generated content weakens critical thinking and creativity.’
Blake Williams, who was also part of last year’s winning team, said ‘we’re enormously grateful for the opportunities that the ESU competition provides. It’s a really distinct and exceptionally versatile set of skills to be putting into practice.’ He added, ‘I’ve been very lucky both times to be debating with exceptionally talented people.’
Their teacher, Tim Schmalz, said ‘This is such a supportive debating competition and it’s wonderful and validating to be back here again with one of the same team as last year, but also two new recruits who have really stepped up.’ Speaking about the effect of their victory last year on the wider school, he added, ‘It was transformational,’ and commented that debating is now respected and recognised on a par with the school’s sporting prowess. He explained that ‘The debaters, the champions, became academic leaders across the school. It was very clear and present and something that the school is still very proud of.’
Entrepreneur Chris Byrne, who participated in the competition as a schoolboy and who was the chair judge of the Grand Final debate, said ‘We as judges have had a real treat listening to these incredible young people speak today. It’s a particularly pertinent topic given that AI is at the forefront of every news article we read, of every business that we look at. And one of the wonderful things about the English-Speaking Union is that it’s equipping young people of this and future generations with the toolkit that they need to tackle the issues that come out of AI.’ Chris, who founded the Rutland Foundation in 2020, has been working closely with the ESU on the ESU-Rutland Oracy Awards, which celebrate teachers and schools who champion oracy.
Political commentator and author Sam Freedman, another of the judges, said: ‘Debate, engagement and thinking through ideas should be a really important part of anyone’s education. I was very, very impressed by the quality of debate today and enjoyed listening to the arguments and how the students were reacting to one another in real time. I spend a lot of time watching parliamentary debates and the quality is often pretty poor, with people more focused on capturing a 20-second talking point for the clip that they’re going to post on social media, rather than trying to engage with each other’s arguments. If competitions like this can encourage young people to debate like that and to bring that back into the way that we think about politics and other areas of life, then that would be a big bonus.’
The English-Speaking Union’s Schools’ Mace is the oldest and largest debating competition for schools in England. It began in 1957 as The Observer Schools’ Mace and was taken over by the English-Speaking Union in 1995. Past winners include Channel 4 News presenter Krishnan Guru-Murthy and broadcaster and author Edward Stourton.
