World Champions

This is my first blip of world champions - complete with trophy!

The championship is the World Schools Debating one and the Scottish team were triumphant in Cape Town in January - the fourth time that Scotland has won since the competition was instituted in 1988.

That record makes Scotland second equal in terms of overall success , only bested by Australia. And in the other years Scotland has - nearly always - secured a good place near the top of the table.

The team manager Irene McGrath who is chair of the Scottish Schools International Debating Council is clearly a world beater herself but all praise to April, Josh, Charlie and Ruth (and the missing member Alfie, who had been in the Parliament for FMQs and to meet the First Minister but who had to go off before they met me to have a French Oral exam . I hope it went well for him).

Thanks to them too for being my blip for the day. In conversation, as well as in competiton, they certainly do "raid the inarticulate" in an excellent phrase from the other team coach I met, Kate Murray the Head of English at Dollar Academy.