Several students from an array of Central West Public Schools came together at Dubbo West Public to compete at stage one of the Multicultural Perspectives Public Speaking Competition 2019.
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The competition is the initiative of the art unit that starts locally and expands outwards, and the winners of the competition will move onto the next stage, which will be the regional finals.
The children make their own decision to enter into the competition, years three and four combined, and years five and six combined.
The winner for years three and four moving forward is Mudgee Public School's Jake Wolfson.
Highly commended were Cudgegong Valley Public's Dusty May, and Bathurst's Camilla Fogarty.
Years five and six winner was Orana Heights Corey Binks who will be moving onto the next round, and high commended was Cudgegong Valley Public School's Skye Simpson, Mudgee's Max Wolfson and Dubbo South Public School's Latiah McMillan.
Hosts, Dubbo West Public School, were unable to take out any winners, but according to teacher Georgia Meredith the competition plays an important role in the development of the kids, and they were just happy to have been able to have children participate on their own accord.
"The arts unit run a number of different speaking and debating initiatives which is important in growing kids confidence, learning skills that are really important outside of school, and once they are in a workplace, have to ability to communicate, address an audience, be able to consider issues and different perspectives and be able to articulately comment on those," Ms Meredith said.
"These are really important skills that in our classrooms we don't get to really teach a lot of the time, so for the kids to be able to step up and enter themselves in this competition is fantastic, they've spent time working on their speeches in preparation."
Ms Meredith said this particular public speaking competition is important because it focuses on multiculturalism.
"The kids are given a list of topics they can choose from, and all of those topics centre on multiculturalism, and a lot of them reflect on a lot of cultures and nationalities that make up Australia, a lot of kids reflect on the different nationalities and cultures, some of them start discussing issues regarding refugees or racism."