On Tuesday 20 October, students from as far as the Wirral joined forces with sixth formers from Gumley House School FCJ, Isleworth in a challenging debate hosted by TEAMGlobal, an independent non-political educational foundation. The conference entitled ‘How Secret is my Life? was attended by 240 students including those from four external schools.

TEAMGlobal organises workshop conferences in schools and universities and their aim is to promote an understanding and discussion of world affairs, thereby enabling young people to act as global citizens and aspire to leadership roles within their communities.

Laurence Smy, Chairman of TEAMGlobal, said: “The students in the school decide the topic they want to discuss and we then find the speakers who can create a conference around this topic.”

Guest speakers at the Gumley conference were Bill Bowring, Professor of Law at Birkbeck and Barrister at Field Court Chambers, Adrian Seccombe, from Leading Edge Forum, Nigel Burrowes from the Home Office and Harmit Kambo from Privacy International.

Loredana Roberts, Director of Global Learning & Communication at Gumley House School FCJ, said: “How often can students come together in one day, hear differing perspectives from experts in their fields on key global topics, debate and challenge the issues whilst working collaboratively with their peers from other schools?”

During the day, each speaker gave a presentation on their topic and the students, who were split into focus groups, were encouraged to consider the issues and then present their ideas and questions back to the speakers. There was a lively exchange of ideas from students and some interesting counter arguments to support an excellent debate.