Judges

Let us introduce ourselves. We are the two Chief Adjudicators for the World Schools Debating Championships in February this year in Qatar.

Chris Erskine helped to establish the World Championships in 1988, and has been judging at the championship since 1993. Simon Quinn debated twice in the championship in 1999 and 2000, being named best speaker in each year. He has judged at the championship several times since 2001, and has also debated and judged at championships in other parts of the world. He is also the author of several debating handbooks for schools.

Assisting us is a small group of senior judges from around the world. They are called the Chief Adjudicators Panel. They are:

Taimur Bandey from Pakistan
Pardip Chopra from Canada
Effie Giannakouri from Greece
Beth James from England
Eva Spoor from The Netherlands

On behalf of the championship, thank you for volunteering to be a judge. The competition can't exist without all of us. We have great responsibility in not only judging fairly and competently, but in giving helpful and positive feedback to the speakers so that they can improve. It is wonderful to find that so many people have agreed to give up their time to judge the debates.

One of the main tasks of the Chief Adjudicators is to assign judges to debates. We need 87 judges for every round of debate, so it's a big task. We need to know about your judging experience so we can make a more informed decision about which debates you will be assigned to.

So we ask each judge to send us a short judging biography. Please tell us how long you have been judging debates, at what level you have judged, any significant national or international tournaments at which you have judged, and the style of debate which you have judged. Please send that biography to Simon and me prior to leaving for Doha.

On the first full day in Doha in February, we will be running a judges briefing and training day. Attendance at this session is compulsory for all judges. Prior to that day, you will be expected to have read the rules and guidelines for debate in this competition. We will NOT be taking you exhaustively through those rules. You must have read them. There will be a short test at the start of the judges briefing to tell us - and you - the particular parts of the rules and guidelines we may need to work on.

You can find the rules and guidelines at:

http://www.schoolsdebate.com/docs/rules_aug09.pdf
These are the Rules of the Competition. You must have read Annexure 3, which is the detailed Schedule of principles for judging debates.

http://www.schoolsdebate.com/docs/notes.asp
This is a discussion of the rules of the competition prepared by a number of senior judges. You must have read all of this.

http://www.schoolsdebate.com/docs/definitions.asp
This is a discussion of the principles for defining motions, prepared by a distinguished former judge of the championship. You must have read all of this.

In summary:

1. Please send the Chief Adjudicators a short biography of your judging experience in debate.

2. Please read the rules and guidelines listed above before you arrive at the judges briefing, because we will not be going through them at the briefing in detail, and we will be having a test on them.


Thanks and best wishes

Chris Erskine
cerskine@ozemail.com.au

Simon Quinn
simonrquinn@gmail.com

Chief Adjudicators
World Schools Debating Championships
Qatar February 2010