[School Debate Series] Diocesan Girls’ School: A convincing case

Inclusiveness is an underlying principle of the debating programme at Diocesan Girls’ School (DGS), and this policy has been a spur to competitive success.

In April, the DGS team won the Hong Kong Schools Debating Competition 2017 Senior Division - for Years 10 to 13 - overcoming Island School in the finals. The team was made up of four S4 debaters: Vennese Chan, Jessie Lo, Jocelyn Tsang and Chloe Yeung.

DGS English teacher Joan Cho has been in charge of the school’s English debate team since 2013.

“Our school currently has more than 70 people in the English debate team, with even more in the debate club,” Cho said. “Although we are a large programme, we want all 70 of our girls to feel they can contribute to the debate community at large.”

Unfortunately, not all of the school’s debaters are able to experience inter-school competition. However, DGS runs junior and senior training sessions every Friday to give everyone the opportunity to take part in shadow debates and help the competing teams with their preparation.

DGS was the winner of the Hong Kong Schools Debating Competition 2017 for the Senior Division.

For Cho, solid preparation is the most important aspect of success in competition. “Sometimes, 12 hours before the match, you see the students editing team arguments and uploading large swathes of their cases on their Google documents.”