Students successfully argued their case on a number of thorny issues to beat rivals from across the country.

The team from Ormiston Venture Academy argued their way to be crowned winners of the National Ormiston Academies Trust (OAT) Debate Competition.

Taking part in the annual competition, Year 10 pupils from Venture engaged in three separate debates against seven different OAT schools.

For the first win of the day, Venture students debated for “lowering the voting age”.

In the second debate, the students opposed the topic of “creating harsher punishments for celebrity animals” which Ormiston Venture students also won.

At the end of the day, all the young ones congregated in the Oxford Union Chamber for the reveal of the final two schools, Ormiston Venture and Ormiston Sudbury in Suffolk. It was up to the students to decide their finalist speakers and floor-debaters, and after a nerve-wracking debate, Venture was announced as the 2017 winner.