These are some of the questions that our students were asked to consider at our Senior Soapbox final, held on Thursday 30 April.

Soapbox competitions encourage students to engage with important social issues, offering and encouraging a call to action for their audience. We had 10 students from across the senior school challenging us with some amazing speeches.

The competition started in Term 1 where we had an impressive number of students sharing both prepared speeches and impromptu responses.

In the Junior High category, our winner was Ayra Tharani (Year 7) with a speech entitled ‘not just a good speech’ where she spoke about the importance of making good decisions when electing our leaders. And Anya Taylor (Year 13) was the winner of the Senior competition, challenging us to be aware of the ways AI was shaping and potentially harming our cognitive ability. Both speeches, as well as those from all other finalists were thought-provoking and well performed. A massive congratulations to everyone involved.

In addition to the speech competition, we had a some amazing visual and written pieces submitted in the Soapbox Art competition.  Congratulations to Audrey Qin (Year 10) and Christine Aixinjueluo (Year 13), winners in the Junior High and Senior visual categories, and Rachel Moo (Year 12) for her poem entitled ‘silent words shared between the world and me’.

I want to extend my heartfelt thanks to everyone who supported this event, particularly the Ethics Council and the incredible Ethics Prefects (Sophia Davies, Keira Gentry and Lila Kirke) who worked tirelessly to make this competition a success. My special thanks also to the teachers who allowed themselves to be filmed, sharing, interesting, and often hilarious, opinions!

Looking ahead, we will be hosting a similar event in the junior school during Term 3, and I am excited to work with our Year 5 and 6 students as they prepare.

Rebecca Berry Eden, Director of Ethics