The team comprising of Siddarth Shrikanth and Sanchith Sivakumar of class 12 along with Mr.Krishna kumar, team coach, represented India at Dundee Scotland between 17 – 27th August 2011. Team India finished  19th among 48 countries with Sanchith Shivakumar ranked no. 8 in the ESL speakers category. Siddarth Shrikanth was placed 17th among more than 100 speakers.

It was an objective well served as it did not only help enhance India as a rising power in the world of International Schools debating and Bala Vidya Mandir as a serious national level debating contender, but also helped the 5 Indian students bridge many a cultural and racial-ethnic gaps.

ISDS Leg III at BVM

On September  3rd, Bala Vidya Mandir played host to the Indian Schools Debating Society’s inter-school championships. 34 teams from 17 schools participated in the event that saw around 25 debates. The objective in bringing the event to our school was to expose more students to the fine art of argumentation and debating.

Towards this end, all English department staff put in their efforts as Gophers for Ballot Sheets, Time Keepers and Chairpersons in various debating rooms. The event began as 8.40 and ended at 2 p.m

World Schools at Cape Town – Try-outs

The Bala Vidya Mandir Debating Team has been participating in the ISDS inter-school debating championship league 2011-12 since July 2011.

The ISDS League is a tiring, arduous and long league of 8 Legs and 14 Rounds that are held each month at least once in some of the various participant schools.

The preliminaries got over on January 21, 2012. At the end of the league prelims, Team A comprising Ramanathan Vignesh, Vaishnav Vasudevan, Adithya Krishnamurthy, Anita Varadarajan (all std XII), Arjun Vignesh, B. Samriddhi and Ishan Venkat (all std XI), Siddharth Shivakumar, Meenakshi Krishnaraj, Namrata Nagaraj & Avantika Sivakumar (all std X) finished 2nd, winning 12 out of their possible 14 debates.

Team B comprising P.Yalini, Malvica Sawhney, Kavya Sreekumar & Prerna Prakash (all std IX), N.S. Tarini (std VIII), Isha Saroja, Tanya Ramprasad, Sadhana Smruthi & Sandhya Saravanan (all std VII) & K.S. Ashvi (std VI) completed their League B engagements with a total of 12 wins out of 14 and TOPPED the League.

In the semi finals held at PSBB KK Nagar on January 28, 2012, Team B from BVM debated against PSBB - Nungambakkam on the Motion that This House Would give Obama a Second Term and defeated them a UNANIMOUS 3-0 decision, with all the three judges favouring the winner.

Team A from BVM debated against PSBB - KK Nagar on the motion - This House Believes That the Arab Spring Movement would not alter the situation of women in those regions. They lost their debate in a close battle, even if by a UNANIMOUS 0-3 decision.

In the GRAND FINALS held at the same venue on the same day, our TEAM B debated against PSBB - KK Nagar on the Motion that This House Believes That Cloud-computing is making PCs Redundant. The speakers were Sadhana Smruthi (Opposition Leader), Sandhya Saravanan (Opposition Deputy) & Kavya Sreekumar (Opposition Rebuttal) with Sandhya Saravanan doing the Opposition Whip.  The GRAND FINALS was judged by a 5-member Jury and BALA VIDYA MANDIR were crowned Champions for the year 2011-12.

Malvica Sawhney of Class IX-B, was listed the overall Third best speaker of the entire League, while Kavya Sreekumar of Clas IX-D (last year's League B Top Speaker) finished 7th this year. Prerna Prakash of Class IX-D completed the top-20 list of best speakers of the B-League.

Arjun Vignesh of Class XI-B was listed the overall 7th best speaker of the A-League, Ramanathan Vignesh of Class XII - A (14) and Meenakshi Krishnaraj of Class X-B (18) were the two other speakers from BVM to figure in the top 20.