During the Lent Term, the Politics Department organised the Cranleigh School entry for the Citizenship Foundation's Youth Parliament competition. Forty VIth Formers worked for seven weeks in mocking up a parliament with the ultimate aim of filming an entry to be judged by a panel of MPs. There were two sections to the competition: - a debate on an issue (thirty minutes) and a Prime Minister’s Question Time session (six minutes).  Our debate was on a bill to combat obesity in 21st century Britain and questions in PMQT were on a range of topical subjects.

 

The whole process throughout was led by the students, from choosing the topic, to writing and preparing speeches and even filming and editing the final finished piece.  As well as winning the national debate section of the competition, three of our students won individual national awards:

 

- Paddy Harman (Best Government spokesperson)

- Ben Sanderson (Best opposition spokesperson)

- Jess Whitehead (Best backbench MP) 

 

Cranleigh beat over fifty schools in winning this prestigious contest, the prize for the School being a trip to Westminster for 15 students for a lavish awards ceremony, with the possibility of meeting Gordon Brown at Downing Street.

 

This is a significant achievement not only for the Politics Department, but for the School as a whole.  There will be a full report of the day in Westminster at a later date.  In the meantime there will be a showing of our national winning entry on the morning of Speech Day in the Merriman Music School and we invite any member of the Cranleigh community to come and watch it.

 

I must thank my colleague Jon Carr for assisting me in the organisation of the competition - without him it would not have been possible.

 

Frank Hardee