Junior Debating Superstars

The Gold Coast Primary Schools Debating Competition took place for the first time this year, offering students in Year 5 and Year 6 the opportunity to experience an introduction in debating in Junior School.

The inaugural cohort of Year 6 Somerset Debaters involved three teams, all of whom had zero debating experience heading into the competition, but whose passion, dedication and overall enthusiasm wholly made up for it. The competition consists of three rounds – arguing the topics: ‘School uniforms should be banned’; ‘Fairytales set us up for disappointment’ and finally that ‘We should ban pets’. Rather than being a leaderboard-style competition, the Primary Schools debates are more an opportunity to see what debating is all about, and to prepare students for the Gold Coast Debating Competition, which is open to Years 7 to 12.

Often requesting multiple training sessions a week, along with early morning practice debates, our three Somerset Year 6 teams absolutely threw themselves into the preparation process and performed extremely strongly in all three rounds across Term Three and Term Four. Special congratulations to Somerset 6.3 (Ailin Zhao, Lawrence Lee, Angela Sun, Evie Wilson, Liam Hartley, Jackson Smith and Ishan Chauhan) who were undefeated across all three debates! Our other teams also performed extremely well, winning two debates apiece.

The future of the Somerset College Debating Programme looks extremely bright, and we look forward to seeing how these students progress throughout their Senior years!