Singapore became only the third team to reach the Grand Final of a WSDC it hosted, and the first to win, beating Canada 8-1 when proposing the motion “THBT governments should provide a guaranteed universal basic income”. Congratulations to Arthur Lee, Samuel Loh, Chong Ee Hsiun, Bryan Yan and Ernest Goh – the new world champions – and to everyone involved in hosting and organising a fantastic tournament!
Blog & news
Indonesia, Morocco & USA bid to host WSDC 2017
Three countries have submitted bids to host WSDC 2017. The Tournament Committee will vote on the eligible bids at its meeting in Singapore in August, and choose the host for 2017.
Hosting a WSDC is an immensely rewarding experience for the organisers and audiences in the host country. It’s also takes an enormous amount of work and fundraising, and even getting to the bid stage can be a difficult task. We’d like to thank all three countries – Indonesia, Morocco & the USA – for their proposals. It’s a shame only one can be chosen this time but we hope the others will bid again in future. WSDC depends on countries offering to host!
Download the bid documents
Draw for WSDC 2015
The draw for the preliminary rounds of the 2015 World Schools Debating Championships in Singapore has been completed by the Chief Adjudicators.
There are 53 participating nations. Since this is an odd number, only 52 teams will debate in each of the 8 rounds. 8 teams (drawn at random) will not debate in one of the rounds will make up for this by debating in the Bye-Round (or ‘Round Zero’). The Bye-Round will be held on Saturday 1st August (in between Round Six on the Friday and Round Seven on the Sunday).
A big thank you to the Chief Adjudicators and Paul Lau for their work on developing the draw for this year’s WSDC.
Best of luck to all the teams with their preparations for the WSDC 2015 debates!
Regards,
Mark Gabriel
Convenor
World Schools Debating Championships 2015, Singapore
Changes to draw system
Having received some feedback on the draft draw grid and methodology which was sent out a few days ago, the Chief Adjudicators (working together with Paul Lau) have decided to make some slight adjustments to the draw methodology for WSDC 2015.
A revised draw grid and a detailed explanation of the methology and
the adjustments made written by Paul Lau can be found in the attached documents.
The Chief Adjudicators will now be completing the draw over the next
day or two, and the draw for the preliminary rounds will then be sent
out to the WSDC community.
Regards,
Mark Gabriel
Convenor
World Schools Debating Championships 2015, Singapore
Draw system & seedings for WSDC 2015
The Chief Adjudicators, with the assistance of Paul Lau, have been working out the system which will be used for determining the draw for the preliminary rounds at WSDC 2015.
The attached documents contain:
- The team rankings which will be used for seeding the draw for 2015 (based on the performance of each nation’s team in the preliminary rounds over the previous 3 years)
- The draw grid for how each team will be paired up against other teams over the preliminary rounds after the draw is conducted
- A detailed explanation of how the draw system for 2015 has been created written by Paul Lau
Before the draw is conducted and finalised, we would like to ask all nations to have a look at the attached documents and let us know if you think there is anything in any of the documents which needs to be corrected.
If you have any feedback on the attached documents, please send your feedback to:
- Tracey Lee <[email protected]>
- Vernie Oliveiro <[email protected]>
- Paul Lau <[email protected]>
- Menno Schellekens <[email protected]>
- Mark Gabriel <[email protected]>
The WSDC Rules require the draw to be released at least 2 weeks before preliminary round 1 (i.e. by 14th July). However if it is possible for the draw to be finalised sooner than that, we may release the draw slightly earlier 14th July.
Regards,
Mark Gabriel
Convenor
World Schools Debating Championships 2015, Singapore
Downloads
Grand Final motion for WSDC 2015
The Motions Committee for the 2015 World Schools Debating Championships in Singapore has now informed the organising committee that the motion for the Grand Final of this year’s championship. It is:
This House Believes that governments should provide a guaranteed Universal Basic Income
The motions for preliminary rounds 1, 2, 3 and, which are prepared rounds, were released earlier this week.
All other rounds (preliminary rounds 4, 6, 7 and 8, the octo-finals, quarter-finals and semi-finals) will be impromptu rounds for which the motion will be released only 1 hour before each debate begins.
Regards,
Mark Gabriel
Convenor
World Schools Debating Championships 2015, Singapore
Prepared motions for WSDC 2015
The Motions Committee for the 2015 World Schools Debating Championships in Singapore has informed the organising committee that the motions for the 4 prepared preliminary rounds of this year’s championships will be as follows:
- Preliminary Round 1: This House would ban the use of zero-hour contracts
- Preliminary Round 2: This House would require defendants in criminal trials to be represented exclusively by public defenders
- Preliminary Round 3: This House supports academic tracking in primary and secondary education
- Preliminary Round 5: This House believes that cities with significant immigrant populations should actively break up ethnic enclaves
The motion for the Grand Final will be announced within the next few days.
All other rounds (preliminary rounds 4, 6, 7 and 8, the octo-finals, quarter-finals and semi-finals) will be impromptu rounds for which the motion will be released only 1 hour before each debate begins.
The Motions Committee for the 2015 World Schools Debating Championships consists of the following individuals –
- Members elected by the WSDC Tournament Committee: Charlie Morris (England – Chairman), Branislav Fečko-Čegiň (Slovakia – Vice-Chairman), Hayah Eichler (Israel), Daniel de Kadt (South Africa) & Cindi Timmons (United States)
- Members appointed by the host organising committee in Singapore: Vernie Oliveiro (Singapore) & Samuel Myat San (Singapore)
- Advisers appointed by the Tournament Committee Executive: Joshua Park (Korea) & Claire Ryan (New Zealand)
Best of luck to all teams with their preparations for the preliminary round prepared motions!
Regards,
Mark Gabriel Convenor, WSDC 2015, Singapore
WSDC 2015 participants: do you have a story to share?
Message from WSDC Singapore organisers:
Dear delegations, team coaches and managers,
Thank you to all who have registered and are participating in WSDC 2015! We look forward to welcoming you to Singapore.
Our debate community-at-large is extremely excited to spread the word about this event, and as part of our outreach, we’re looking for human interest stories to lend a human face to our efforts. These stories will be used in local media platforms, who are generously assisting in reaching out to the wider audience beyond competitive debaters.
Why should this matter? As many of you would surely agree, Worlds is fundamentally about empowering our students as debaters, and we want to make sure that the greater community here fully appreciates the diversity, spirit, and character of the debaters who will make up WSDC 2015.
We would like to ask for your help in offering stories about your debaters and/or teams that we can share; this should be in the form of a 50-100 word paragraph sent to [email protected] . Since these will be used in local media, we would need the consent of debaters and teams.
When sending in this paragraph, please also include the following:We consent to the WSDC Singapore organizing committee using the above information for public outreach and on any relevant media platform.
We look forward to your support and participation! Thank you for helping us share what WSDC means to each of us with the rest of Singapore.
Regards,
Tan Teck Wei
Organising Committee Member
53 countries register for WSDC 2015 in Singapore
Registration of teams for the 2015 World Schools Debating Championships in Singapore officially closed on 11th February.
At the official close of registrations, 53 nations had registered a team: Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Canada, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Japan, Korea, Kuwait, Lithuania, Macau, Malaysia, Mexico, Morocco, Namibia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Pakistan, Palestine, Peru, Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sri Lanka, Swaziland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States, Wales and Zimbabwe.
In addition to this, the organising committee has given China permission to submit their registration later this week (their Team Manager is travelling without Internet access until tomorrow).
2 other nations have been in e-mail contact with the organising committee about registering but have yet to formally submit their registrations – Jamaica and Switzerland. The organising committee is currently communicating with these nations to determine their participation status.
Of the nations which competed in the 2014 championship in Thailand, only Chile has not submitted a registration for WSDC 2015. If anyone from Chile would like to register a team for the 2015 competition, they should contact the organising committee urgently at [email protected].
If any other nation not noted above also wants to register, they should also e-mail the organising committee in Singapore urgently.
In a small number of cases there have been 2 different organisations from a nation who have both registered a team. As the WSDC Rules allow only 1 competing team per nation, the WSDC Tournament Committee Executive is currently dealing with these situations and will make a decision as to which organisation from the nation will be permitted to enter a team in WSDC 2015. (The relevant organisations in the nations concerned have already been informed of this.)
Invoices for the 50% deposit registration fee payment will be sent out to registered nations at the beginning of March.
Regards,
Mark Gabriel
Co-Convenor
World Schools Debating Championships 2015, Singapore
Website: www.wsdc2015.org
Results of Motions Committee 2015 election
The postal ballot to choose the 5 elected members of the Motions Committee for the 2015 World Schools Debating Championships has now closed.
The WSDC Tournament Committee delegates of 31 nations cast their votes in the ballot. These nations were: Argentina, Bangladesh, Barbados, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Estonia, Germany, Greece, Japan, Kuwait, Lithuania, Mexico, Netherlands, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Romania, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, United States and Wales.
Each nation was able to vote for a maximum of 5 candidates (though some nations chose to cast fewer than 5 votes). The votes for the 6 candidates were as follows:
- Charlie Morris (England) – 27 votes
- Branislav Fečko-Čegiň (Slovakia) – 25 votes
- Hayah Eichler (Israel) – 24 votes
- Daniel de Kadt (South Africa) – 22 votes
- Cindi Timmons (United States) – 19 votes
- Zaynab Al Nasser (Kuwait) – 16 votes
Therefore CHARLIE MORRIS, BRANISLAV FEČKO-ČEGIŇ, HAYAH EICHLER, DANIEL DE KADT and CINDI TIMMONS have been elected to serve on the Motions Committee for WSDC 2015. They will be joined on the committee by 2 members appointed by the host organising committee – VERNIE OLIVEIRO and SAMUEL MYAT SAN (both of whom are from Singapore).
Under the WSDC Rules, the Motions Committee will also have 2 further “Advisers” who will be selected by the Tournament Committee Executive at a later date. When the Motions Committee has chosen its provisional lists of motions for the prepared rounds and the impromptu rounds, they will share each of these lists with the Advisers. The Advisers will either approve the list or suggest that the wording or topic areas of certain motions should be reconsidered. If the Advisers recommend that any motions should be reconsidered, they will the take part in the Motions Committee’s remaining discussions as non-voting members.
The WSDC Rules require the Motions Committee to give the host the selected motions for the prepared rounds (4 of the preliminary rounds plus the Grand Final) 8 weeks before the first day of debates at the championships. The organising committee in Singapore will circulate the prepared motions to teams shortly after receiving them from Motions Committee.
Thank you very much to all the delegates who voted in the ballot and congratulations to the successful candidates. We look forward to some great debate motions at WSDC 2015.
Regards,
Mark Gabriel
Returning Officer