Wrap up for Debating 2024
It’s been a busy and successful year for all our Debating and Public Speaking students, with over 200 students spending most of the year training and competing in various live and online events. This year expanded our horizons by entering some online international debating competitions. This gave teams the opportunity to debate teams from schools and coaching academies in Sydney that we do not usually compete against, as well as teams from Singapore, Malaysia and Hong Kong.
Our Term 4 activity was to enter thirteen MLC School teams in the IDC (International Debating Championships). This competition was on a Friday evening and turned out to be a lot more difficult than we anticipated, with lots of high-quality teams compete against. It consisted of four preliminary rounds of debates every week followed by a finals series. Our Year 6 team, (MLC 2) made it through to the Quarter Finals (Abira Sanan, Lavinia Xu, Georgia Sutton, Maggie Ma). Our Senior Year 10 team, MLC 11 (Jordan Vo, Umaiza Mahfuz, Elena Tulloch, Anna Obaid) made it through to the Octo finals. The Junior Year 7 MLC 5 team (Chelsea Keomanivong, Bonnie Li, Anna Poortvliet, Audrey Buck, Aditi Knowles) also made it through to the Octo-Finals and won so then had to immediately do back-to-back debates competing in the Quarter Finals on the same night. There was general jumping around and celebrations, even if it was 9pm on a Friday evening, when they were announced the winners in a close debate against the 2nd ranked team in the Junior division. MLC 5 have already put in a spectacular effort to be in the last 4 teams in the Junior division which began with 88 teams competing. The Semi-final is on this Friday evening and let’s hope they can make it to the Grand Final.
This week we did our trials for the 2025 Year 8 – Year 12 competition debating teams, there was a lot of nervous energy in the debate rooms. Somehow doing a debate with a panel of our coaches watching is more stressful than any other debate. The trials for our ISDA Year 6 Primary teams and our ISDA/FED Year 7 teams will take place in Week 2 Term 1 2025 (Starting Monday 3 February 2025). The competition debating for FED and ISDA is an invite only activity. The Year 6/7s will have to register to trial for this. An email will go out to all students in Term 1, Week 1 (starting Tuesday 28 January 2025) inviting them to register to trial.
For those who make the team the commitment is Wednesday training 3.30pm – 4.30pm every week during Terms 1 and 2. Debate night is Fridays 3.30-7pm, sometimes we are at MLC School or at another school. Parents need to collect their child afterwards, but they stay with me and their coach from 3.30pm. Once we have decided on teams, I will send out the link for parents to enrol and pay for the activity. So, nothing to do before early next year.
For those students who do not make the teams we also have the SDC (Sydney Schools Debating) online social debating competition on 3.30-6.30pm Friday evenings based at school. We had several teams doing this competition last year as an enjoyable way to practice with their own coach and speak in a debate every week.
Our popular Oratory classes on Thursday afternoons for Years 5-12 will be running in 2025. Use the link below to enrol in a class:
A huge thank you to all the parents and carers who have supported our debaters and public speakers this year and driven all over Sydney to collect them after our many events. Any questions about our activities please email me at arowe@mlcsyd.nsw.edu.au
– Andrea Rowe
Oratory Coordinator
