Debate Mate has accomplished immense success and growth since launching in 30 schools in London in 2008. The programme expanded to Manchester and Birmingham in 2009, followed by other locations - Bristol, Nottingham, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, the wider West Midlands, Cardiff and Grimsby. In 2022-23 we worked with 235 schools in both our in person and online programmes.
Debate Mate has worked with several prestigious organisations in recent years, including The Premier League, The Economist, Comic Relief, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Number 10 Downing Street, BiteBack 2030, Deloitte, and Goldman Sachs. Our CEO, Margaret McCabe, was also nominated for the Yidan Prize in Education Development in 2019.
The UK has one of the lowest rates of social mobility amongst OECD countries. This means that children growing up in poverty are less likely to achieve in school, to attend university, and to find productive employment as adults. By the age of seven, children who are eligible for Free School Meals are more than twice as likely as their better-off peers to be behind on expected reading levels. Over 60 percent of these children will fail to achieve five good GCSEs, which significantly increases their chances of becoming unemployed upon leaving school.
Our methodology uses active learning techniques to engage students and make learning fun through a debate-led teaching approach. The curriculum has been honed over the years with teacher, student, and mentor input. By connecting current affairs and global issues to their personal experiences, students are encouraged to ask questions, debate them, and arrive at their own opinions.
Our Opportunities
Debate Mate aims to tackle educational disadvantage in some of Britain’s most deprived communities. It does this by recruiting and training university students to run extra-curricular debate workshops in schools in these areas. https://debatemate.org