The theme for Y8A was ‘Every voice should be heard’ and we considered issues such as who speaks loudest in society and who is ‘voiceless’, the benefits of speaking well for job prospects, education and leisure as well as for defending and advocating on behalf of others. We learnt how to craft speeches by evaluating the work of celebrities such as Michael McIntyre and Michelle Obama before putting these skills into action by creating our own one minute speeches on the importance of oracy or ‘my passion’. It was fantastic to see pupils grow in confidence throughout the day and push themselves to stand up in front of their peers and deliver speeches on a range of topics.

During period 5, two winners from each form presented their speeches to the rest of the year group – these ranged from a heartfelt anecdotal speech explaining the benefits of oracy for the inclusion and protection of vulnerable people to a persuasive piece encouraging people to sponsor an endangered animal to a comedy speech highlighting the appeal of the computer game ‘Fortnite’.

The overall winners, Lulu Jackson and Natalia Niebrzegowska, were awarded their prizes by our guest speaker Councillor Warren Ward. It was fantastic to welcome Warren back to SJP as an ex-pupil of the college and to hear him speak to us about his journey into politics and the importance of young people’s voices. Some of our pupils interviewed him on stage and we learnt about the records that he has broken including that he is the youngest elected politician in the UK and that he was the youngest politician ever elected across the Merseyside region. He was certainly very inspiring for our pupils and responded well to their challenging questions. It was a fantastic day and hopefully just the beginning of their journey to realising that ‘every voice should be heard’ including their own and those who are ‘voiceless’.