On 27 September, a group of ten year twelve students and I were given the fantastic opportunity to attend the Big Green Week environmental conference at the City Hall.

Upon arrival we were greeted by staff members who showed us to our school's table. Other schools at the event included; Lancaster Academy, WQE College, Judgemeadow Community College, Jameah Girls Academy, Babington Academy. Each school was allocated a country to later engage in a UN style debate with, and Leicester High was given Chile.

We spent the morning listening to the keynote speakers including Heidi, Tyler and myself from Climate Strike Leicester, a youth-led climate protest group in Leicester. The speeches were followed by a morning session giving us valuable background information on the climate crisis.

We then engaged in a session researching our allocated countries climate pledges, including net zero targets and what their governments were doing to minimise global warming.

After a short break, we began to debate in a UN style across the floor, critiquing or praising other schools and countries environmental policies. Several schools were impressed with our teams' debating skills, and a few councillors later congratulated our team for representing our School confidently and eloquently. We enjoyed the debate enormously and felt liberated to be able to reprimand other countries or our own for not doing enough for the crisis.

After a lunch break, we listened to an inspirational speech from Sarah of Plastic Clever Schools, who described how the movement had spread in her city and had empowered young people to take action on plastic and how the movement could be introduced in our schools. We then listened to a talk from councillor Adam Clarke, followed by an introduction to Leicester City councils Climate Emergency Action Plan and roadmap.

After listening to the Council's planned actions on combatting climate change, we were given the amazing opportunity to question a panel of councillors on their aims, asking them whether they planned to do more and questioning policies they were planning on instigating.

We all enjoyed the conference enormously and felt great pride in representing our school at such a prestigious event.

-Nell L Year 12