Torquay Girls’ Grammar School has been named the best team in the English-Speaking Union’s Public Speaking Competition 2025
Torquay Girls’ Grammar School has been named the best team in the English-Speaking Union’s Public Speaking Competition 2025. Hattie Eve (speaker), Mia Maddock (chair) and Rosie Read (the team’s questioner, who also won best questioner overall) beat 11 other regional finalists to first place at the Grand Final at Dartmouth House, Mayfair, on Friday, 30 May – the culmination of a contest which has featured over 90 heats and branch finals and in which over 1,400 children have taken part. Other winners were Tamoy Cameron from King Edward VI Handsworth School for Girls, who won best speaker, and Zeph Adebowale from Royal Grammar School, High Wycombe, who won best chair.
ESU alumna and former presenter of BBC Look East Susie Fowler-Watt, chair of the judges, said, ‘I’ve been judging this competition for many, many years now, and I have never seen a final of this standard, it’s been quite extraordinary. Every single one of the students here today has skills that are going to make their adult life so much more successful. Oracy – being able to communicate, being able to make such strong arguments and being able to command an audience – is such a remarkable skill.’
Fellow judge MP and ESU alumna Helen Hayes said, ‘We’re undertaking an inquiry on further education and skills on the Education Select Committee at the moment, and we’ve been hearing a lot from employers about what we call ‘soft’ skills, but which are actually not soft at all: the ability to sustain an argument, to articulate a point, to communicate well and in engaging terms. We are in an age when young people can rely on technology a lot for the accumulation of knowledge. And knowledge is really important, but being able to process and articulate that knowledge and communicate it with others verbally is also extremely important.’
The prestigious ESU Public Speaking Competition, is the largest such contest in England and Wales, with around 360 teams (each comprising a speaker, questioner and a chairperson). The different roles allow students to practise and excel in different skill sets, and the competition’s unique format, which pairs the speaker from one school with the chair and questioner of another, encourages quick thinking and relationship building. Past winners include impressionist and comedian Rory Bremner and broadcaster and author Anita Anand.
