Debating Club

Debating Report 

Mrs Jenny Roff

After a hiatus of several years, debating began once more at O'Connor in 2018 with a few local debates. In 2019 two teams travelled to Inverell to compete against Holy Trinity and St Mary's Gunnedah and numbers at the weekly debating club began to swell.

2020 was meant to start with an Armidale interschool challenge, but unfortunately COVID restrictions meant that we were unable to gather at The Old Teacher's College for a two day tournament.

Mrs Roff was reluctant to let the enthusiasm of so many interested students wain, and so she searched for online debating competitions and entered five teams from year 7 to year 11 in the NGS Super debating competition hosted by Australian Independent Schools which was open to all schools Australia wide.

Over one month O'Connor participated in 17 online debates, coming up against schools from all over NSW, WA, ACT, QLD, VIC and TAS. Despite the intense time frame, the students really benefitted from regular debating and constructive feedback which they could quickly apply to their next match.

All of the O'Connor teams were very competitive with quite a few victories, and any losses were exceedingly close, often with by only one or two points. The junior team of Anna Newsome, Ava Vaughan, Gabby Williams and Mia Vaughan were successful in moving through to the next level...we will keep you posted.