World Debating Championships

Jessica Curry (Senior VI) and Hannah McLoughlin (Senior V) have secured two of the five places on the Scottish Schools’ Debating Team to represent Scotland at the World Debating Championships.

The team is selected from schools across Scotland, and Jessica and Hannah along with fellow St Columba’s pupils, Jamie Beverstock and Rachael Curry, were four of the final twelve trialists for Team Scotland.   The selection for the final five team members was held on Saturday 19th November at George Watson’s College.

Jessica and Hannah will be joined by two pupils from the High School of Dundee and another from George Watson’s College to complete the Scottish team who will compete at the World Debating Championships in Bali next summer. 

Established in 1988 with teams from six countries, the World Schools’ Debating Championships is now a truly global competition for high school debaters and over forty countries are now represented at the Championships. St Columba’s pupils have represented Team Scotland in Athens 2009, Qatar 2010, Turkey 2013, Bangkok 2014, Singapore 2015, Stuttgart 2016 - of which Jessica was part of the team - and now Bali 2017.  There are high expectations of the young Scottish debaters as Scotland has won the championships on four occasions. 

Debating is well-established at St Columba’s. Our debaters participate in around twenty competitions annually and a recent highlight was winning the International Mace, a truly amazing achievement for a small school and a trophy very few Scottish schools have managed to win.

David Girdwood, Rector, said, “For a relatively small school I am immensely proud of what our debaters achieve on the national and international debating stage. We have an extremely talented bunch of pupils and I am grateful to our debating teacher, Mrs Janet Stevens, not only for her drive and commitment to our debaters but for having the foresight to establish the West Coast World’s Debating Competition. Created ten years ago to fill a space in the school debating calendar, it provides the only opportunity for young debaters in Scotland to engage in the World Schools’ Debating style.”