Jack Petchey's "Speak Out" Challenge

The Jack Petchey Speak Out Challenge is a competition geared towards empowering young people to share their stories, build confidence, inspire each other and develop public speaking skills that will help them to be excellent communicators. The competition takes place across London and Essex with over 30,000 students taking part in the workshops every year.

Eastbrook offered 60 of our most enthusiastic year 10 students the opportunity to participate in a workshop with professional speakers. It was a fantastic day in which students were pushed out of their comfort zone, encouraged to think on their feet and to express themselves. It culminated with a competition in which every student performed a one minute speech on a topic they felt passionate about to their peers.

Out of these sixty, only six went through to the next round, who delivered powerful presentations on topics that ranged from the alienating effects of social media, healthy sibling rivalry and the power of the maternal influence.

On Wednesday 26th of February these finalists presented their speeches at the year 9 assembly with the headteacher, Mr Gibson and deputy head, Mr Hewitt acting as the judging panel to award two lucky winners a place at the Jack Petchey Speak Out regional final. It was a close run contest with brilliant and engaging speeches from the finalists but two students emerged triumphant – their compelling talks on womanhood and feminism in the 21st century and the power of believing in others, respectively, stood out for their delivery and subject matter.

They now get the chance to represent the school in the regional final on home turf, as our very own Wazid won last year! The final will be hosted at Eastbrook School on the 25th March and all are welcome to attend. Well done to all students who participated. We are immensely PROUD of them and all our finalists!