BROMSGROVE School held the final of its EU referendum research project competition recently with four teams of sixth formers acting as consultants for the UK in a mock debate on what the country should do after June 23.

Two of the teams were working on the assumption that we would vote to leave the EU, while the other two worked as though we would be remaining in the EU.

All four teams faced questions from an audience, as well as from a panel of experts, which included headmaster and former geography teacher Peter Clague, senior lecturer in law at Aston University, Dr Ryan Murphy, and Patricia Noon who sits on the committee for the charity Ladies Fighting Breast Cancer.

Bromsgrove School teacher Dr Dawn Rimmer, praised the pupils saying how they had “impressed the panel and audience alike with their tenacity for taking on a project that required so much self-discipline and intellectual rigour.”

Using some innovative technology the audience was able to vote anonymously on each of the presentations by the teams, and submit questions for the teams, as well as taking part in a number of polls, and the voting altered quite significantly in two polls, with one taken at the beginning of the debate showing 73 per cent of the audience voting to remain and 27 per cent voting to leave, changing to 34 per cent voting to remain and 60 per cent voting to leave by the end of the competition. Six per cent opted to abstain form the final vote.

Students, former students, parents and staff were all invited along to listen to the debate, and the judging panel awarded the winning prize to Olivia Bond and Edward Drayson who presented arguments for the introduction of compulsory voting, the removal of Trident, and the idea of using fracking to take on the global fuel market.