Selecting and coaching a team

How to select a team

Once a school debating society has been established, many schools begin to enter debating competitions. There are lots of competitions throughout the year (see Tournaments). Competitive debating is a great way to improve and enhance the skills that debating promotes. It is also great fun!

Although only a limited number of children can take part in competitions (most competitions limit participation to one or two teams per school), that does not mean that competitive debating should only benefit the children selected for the team. It is often difficult to decide which children to pick for the tournament. One way of picking the team, and a way which involves many more students in active debating, is to have an in-school selection process.

This could involve running a competition within the debating society and selecting the best participants to go on and represent the school. The internal competition could be run over a series of lunchtime sessions as a knock-out tournament.

Alternatively, the coach can select the teams. Different coaches use different criteria - some pick the strongest debaters to form teams, others rotate the teams so that everyone gets a chance to debate competitively, some ask for volunteers, and some mix and match these systems. Again, there is no right or wrong way to select a team.

One useful idea, when the society is more established, is to think about pairing a more experienced speaker with a less experienced speaker. This helps both speakers - the more experienced debater takes on a mentoring role and the less experienced speaker benefits from debating with a strong debater. This is an excellent way of encouraging pupil mentoring and is a useful way of passing on knowledge.

Debating in Schools case study - Craigmount High School

Staff at Craigmount High School started a society to provide positive experiences in debating, and have found that their students enjoyed the competitive aspect too.