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ASD invites those leaving high school at the end of 2024 to express interest in become an ASD adjudicator in 2025.

Welcome to Auckland Schools Debating for 2025. We hope you were able to have a good break, and that your 2025 has started well. This post sets out the entry process for 2025 as well as other information for the year ahead. If you have any questions regarding any information in this email, the year ahead with ASD, or feedback on debating in 2024 please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Important Links

• Website – www.asd.org.nz
• 2025 Registration Guide and Competition Information
• 2025 Calendar
• 2025 Changes
• How to Debate Guide

Registration Deadlines

• Teacher in Charge Confirmation Form – Due Wednesday 26 February
• Seasonals Championship Registration Form – Due Monday 24 February
• Premier Grade Registration Form – Due Monday 3 March
• Open Grade Registration Form – Due Monday 3 March

Tournament Dates

• Counties Manukau Regionals – Saturday 22 February
• Seasonals – Saturday 1 March
• Auckland Regionals – Saturday 23 March and Sunday 24 March

Changes in 2025 

Following feedback on changes to the competition in 2024 the committee are going to continue with the updated time slots for Advanced Open, Premier Junior, and Premier Advanced, allowing student adjudicators in Senior Open, and the delayed draw release for open grades.

Based on feedback from teachers in 2024 the committee is proposing trialing the following changes for the 2025 season:

• Introducing a third zone for Advanced Open. This zone will take place online.

This zone will co-exist with the two current zones (central and north). This means that teams who debate in the online rounds before the break will only debate against other online teams. There are two reasons for this change. First, it will relieve pressure on the central AO zone which means the competition can continue to accommodate more teams, and allow the committee to avoid enforcing team number caps. Second, it will allow schools who are far from central, or north, Auckland to participate in AO without an excessively long commute.

AO Online will be judged by ASD accredited adjudicators over zoom.

• Running the Northern Advanced Open grade on a different schedule to the other zones

As indicated on the calendar linked above, we have changed the weeks on which AO runs on the North Shore. AO North will now run on the weeks indicated as “AO North” and not on the weeks just labelled AO. We appreciate this change may be a little confusing as we introduce it so we will send reminders on the appropriate weeks for the impacted grades.

We are implementing this change to help ensure judge and convenor availability for AO North. By running AO on consecutive weeks we allow our judges and convenor to reliably fill this time lot with ASD. This ensures that we will have sufficient judge numbers available as AO north continues to grow in size.

• Registering ASD as an incorporated Charitable Trust

Finally, the committee is currently in the process of incorporating Auckland Schools’ Debating as a charitable trust. ASD currently operates as an unincorporated society which is no longer suitable for the organisation’s size and reach. As such we are in the process of incorporating as a charitable trust.

We currently intend the Trust’s board to be composed of former members of the ASD committee. The Board will function in an oversight role meeting around 4 times per year, or as needed. The day to day management of ASD will continue to be done through the committee and managers.

Moving to a trust structure will benefit ASD in three ways. First, as ASD grows we are expecting to cross the GST threshold in 2025 (as discussed under entry fees), being incorporated makes it easier to ensure we comply with our obligations on this point. Second, this will formalise ASD’s management. This allows the trust to employ managers to oversee the competition while retaining experienced community members to provide guidance and oversight. This will help us to continue to grow ASD’s competitions while providing a consistent tournament and grade experience. Third, this will allow direct engagement between the board and teachers.

ASD welcomes feedback on these proposed changes to be emailed to us at info@asd.org.nz prior to Friday 14 February.

Entry Fees

Due to recent growth in 2025 ASD needs to start collecting GST. To avoid a 15% increase relative to 2024 the committee has decided to temporarily cut our base fees for 2025. This means that, including GST, our fees for 2025 will be 10% higher than 2024.

As in previous years, we will be offering fee subsidies to schools who need it. We will be reaching out to schools which qualify for the automatic fee subsidies individually. If you believe you will have issues paying but have not been contacted, please get in touch with the committee via email.

Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any further questions.

Kind regards,

ASD Committee 2025

Dear Teachers, Coaches, and Adjudicators,

Welcome to Auckland Schools Debating for 2024. This post concerns the entry process for 2024 as well as other crucial information for the year ahead.

Important Links

• 2024 Registration Guide and Competition Information
• 2024 Calendar
• 2024 Changes
• How to Debate Guide

Registration Deadlines

• Teacher in Charge Confirmation Form – Due Wednesday 28 February
• Seasonals Championship Registration Form – Due Monday 5 March
• Premier Grade Registration Form – Due Monday 11 March
• Open Grade Registration Form – Due Friday 15 March

Tournament Dates

• Counties Manukau Regionals – Saturday 24 February
• Seasonals – Sunday 10 March
• Auckland Regionals – Saturday 23 March and Sunday 24 March

Changes in 2024

Following feedback and discussions with teachers and coaches during 2023, the committee are proposing the trial of three changes to ASD during 2024

Time Change for Advanced Open, Premier Junior, and Premier Advanced

Debates for Advanced Open, Premier Junior, and Premier Advanced will start 30 minutes earlier (motion announcement at 5:00pm and 6:30pm). This is to allow an earlier end to nights.

Student Adjudication for Senior Open 

Schools may nominate a Year 13 student to become an adjudicator for 1 or 2 Senior Open teams. The student must have completed at least 1 year of debating in Premier Advanced or Advanced Open participating in a minimum of 3 debates, or must have been an active member of the 2023 Development Squad.

Delayed Draw Release for Open Grades

During 2023 the Draws for Junior Open, Senior Open, and Advanced Open were released at least one week in advance. In order to reduce the number of teams who miss out on debating due to the default of their opposition, we propose that:

• Teams will be allocated a time slot at least one week prior to the debate. For prepared rounds, teams will also be allocated a side.
  • If a team cannot attend a debating round, they can either defer their debate to the catch-up round or default the debate.
  • Teams must notify the committee of their intention to defer the debate by 4pm the weekday before the debate. Teams in these grades can only defer one debate per year.
  • If a team has already previously deferred a debate, or if notification occurs after 4pm the weekday before the debate, the team will default the round.
• A team must notify the Committee by 12pm on the day of a debate if they must default the debate.
  • The Draw for each round will be generated at 12pm on the day of each debate and published on our tabulation website. However, this can be subject to change up until the start of the debate. This Draw will exclude any teams which have already deferred or defaulted the round.
  • If there is an uneven number of teams available, one team will win the round by default, and be notified that they are not required to attend the debate. If the team is already en route to the debate, the committee can organise for the team to receive feedback on a practice debate case.
• No change will be made at this stage to the way the draw is generated for Premier grades.

ASD welcomes feedback on these proposed changes to be emailed to us at info@asd.org.nz prior to Friday 16 February.

ASD invites those leaving high school at the end of 2023 to express interest in become an ASD adjudicator in 2024.

Link to Form

Given the heavy weather warnings, and advice from Auckland Transport, we have made the decision to cancel Round 2 of Senior Open tonight.

At present, we are not planning to add an extra round to the competition (meaning SO will just be 4 rounds for 2023). However, we will likely keep the same draw and advised topic of Round 3 so that your teams’ work does not go to waste. Please let us know at info@asd.org.nz if you have any feedback about our proposed plan.

We hope everyone is able to keep safe and dry tonight.

We’re pleased to let you know that all of our venues are now confirmed for 2023. Thank you to all of our host schools as it would be impossible to run the competition without them.

• Junior Open: Rangitoto College (North), Epsom Girls Grammar School (Central), Lynfield College (West), Howick College (East), Tangaroa College (South)
• Senior Open: Westlake Boys High School (North), ACG Parnell (Central), Sacred Heart College (East), De La Salle College (South), Avondale College (West)
• Advanced Open: St Cuthbert’s College, Carmel College
• Premier Junior: Diocesan School for Girls
• Premier Advanced: Auckland Grammar School

We will be updating the venue pages on our website with updated venue information for 2023 in the coming week.

ASD is looking for adjudicators to judge its Tournaments, Premier and Advanced Open grades. We welcome any university age students or older who are interested in adjudicating to express their interest.

Complete this form and we’ll get in touch with more information about what adjudicating for ASD entails and on when our adjudicator training sessions. Completing this form does not commit you to anything.

All new adjudicators will go through an adjudicator training programme before becoming an ASD accredited adjudicator.

ASD 2023 – Adjudicator Express of Interest

If you are a high school student and are interested in adjudicating Junior Open for your school, please speak to the Teacher in Charge of debating at your school. Our policy on high school student coaches/adjudicators is available on our website linked here.