Ratcliffe College wins two debating competitions in French

The first of those, a French debating competition at Stamford school, was won by four girls in Year 12 - Hebe Jackson, Sarah Astill, Molly Edwards and Olivia Delargy.

As part of the day, there was a talk from a former Special Forces interpreter on the importance of learning languages, as well as training on presenting and speaking in public.

The judges marked each team on the originality of their arguments, logic, quality of French, body language, entertainment and teamwork.

After a nail biting wait, Ratcliffe were pronounced the winners, beating seven other teams from Stamford, Birkdale, Perse, Kings, Oundle and Leicester High.

The girls each collected Amazon vouchers as their prize.

The second competition Ratcliffe entered was the Business Language Champions in collaboration with GCHQ.

The school enrolled French and German Year 10 groups who had to learn Korean, Arabic or Mandarin, decipher codes, present findings on the main communication and transport networks in France and design a spy game.

Ratcliffe’s French team beat nine other schools to win and claim their prize - a visit to Bletchley Park.