FOUR young students at The Armidale School with a gift of the gab and a knack of rebuttal are now national champions, having taken out an Australian-wide debating competition.
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In the grand final of the Junior division of the National Virtual Debating Competition on Wednesday, Bella Fernance (Year 8), Jack Coddington, Daniel Emmery and Samuel Krishnan (all Year 7) successfully affirmed 'That all Australian schools should have compulsory community service' against Loreto Catholic Girls' School Normanhurst, Sydney.
In a unanimous decision from the three adjudicators, TAS was awarded the debate for building a case around the idea that only a mandatory community service program incorporated into the school curriculum would expose all students to the importance of service; would ensure critical mass for it to be worthwhile to all, and 'normalise' the concept of service in order to change behaviour and ultimately create a more selfless and engaged society.
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"The grand final was a massive day for us all, these four country kids were up against one of the highest achieving academic schools in Australia," Daniel said.
"Having gone through the entire competition with no expectations we had finally made it. With nerves through the roof, we all managed to keep our cool and do what we do best... talk.
"Bella set out our model then I explored the impact on different stakeholders, a concept we learnt during adjudicator feedback from the one debate we lost in the group stage of the competition," he said.
Third speaker Jack and Sam our fourth, were able to rebut their counter-case that the very nature of community service should be voluntary and that this would add extra stress on students, and while Loreto finished the debate with an impressive third speaker, the adjudicators felt some of our ideas weren't contested so we were awarded the debate!"
With so much inter-school competition being cancelled due to the pandemic, Jack said the online platform meant schools got to experience different debating styles.
"It allowed us to expand our debating knowledge and understanding the importance of particular ideas in the process. We were very fortunate to have been able to get personal feedback from the adjudicators showing us what we can improve on and where we went well.
The opposing teams also taught us so much and everyone was fair and respectful. The lunchtimes and school periods to practice our debating brought our whole team closer together," said Jack.
The students' achievements were recognised the next morning at Speech Day when Head of School Alan Jones presented students with the highest co-curricular award, a gold medallion.
"To have won their division is an amazing and incredible feat and they and their coach Mr Tim Hughes all deserve to be immensely proud of their efforts, as we are of them," he said.
Ninety teams from independent and Catholic schools in six states and territories competed in four divisions of this year's competition, which was run by the Association of Independent Schools (NSW).
