It is our belief that in an era of AI content and heavily edited or filtered bitesize footage online, the power of the live, human spoken word should be encouraged and celebrated more than ever.

Every single student in Years 8 and 10 has the chance to devise and deliver a 3-minute talk on the topic of their choice to the rest of their English class. In Year 8, each class produces a winner and a runner-up, who then enter the Final, an extended Assembly in front of the whole year group. The set-up is much the same in Year 10, although a select group gets to follow up on their GCSE Spoken Assessment (also a 3-minute talk) by enjoying a day’s workshop delivered by a professional public speaking trainer.

The topics in both finals were typically broad, ambitious and engaging, from the brilliance of the Rubik’s Cube to the important concept of ‘YOLO’. Every single finalist in both competitions spoke with confidence and style. The judges had to consider three criteria: Content, Delivery and Structure. It was genuinely a very difficult task to pick a runner-up and winner in each age group, and the final results were as follows:

Year 8

Winner
Sade Coker - Taking Risks

Runner-up
Isida Manolakou - ‘Mindful Eating’

Year 10 (pictured below)

Winner
Grace Shaw

Runner-up
Henry Mann - ‘The Day the No-one Clapped’ 

Congratulations to all the contestants, but especially to Grace, who now has the task of representing the school in the regional final, to be held here at BGS (as Devine Kapu, now in Y11, won it with her fantastic speech) on Thursday, March 12th 2026 in the main Hall. Please come along to support her!

Mr Griffin, Head of English