With lock-down came the premature end to most school competitions and extracurricular, a disappointing start to the year.

Debating however, persevered, due to the collaborative effort of regional competitions across New Zealand to organise the Aotearoa Online Schools' Debating competition.

Every week, students have had the opportunity to improve their debating and socialise with online debates held through Zoom. Over a range of topics from youth electoral lists to commercialising dinosaur technology, they have been able to prove their skill amongst some of the best debaters from across the country. The online medium did create some challenges, with shorter speech times and a ban on interjections, but we learnt to debate in an entirely different way - rebuttal now had to be typed into an Instagram chat rather than shared across the table.

The Dunedin region saw success with a number of teams breaking into the final rounds. The OGHS 1 team, consisting of Hetty Finney Waters, May Cavanagh and Maita Mackenzie, won four out of six debates in the Premier Grade, and advanced to the quarter-finals, before losing a close debate with St Margaret’s College. A Year 11 team of Jana Elvy, Janet Hollard and Loji Moharram also took part in the Advanced grade, a great chance to gain the experience they might have missed out on with Dunedin Debating postponed.

Overall, it was a very enjoyable competition, and we are looking forward to the Dunedin competition resuming later this term.