Twenty schools across Ireland compete in Griffith Colleges Annual Schools Debating Competition.

Friday, March 22nd, saw the return of the highly popular Schools Debating Competition held in Griffith College's Dublin Main Campus.

Teams from 20 secondary schools across Ireland debated the motion “This House believes that Ireland's exam-obsessed model is failing Irish students.” Teams consisted of four members, each having the opportunity to speak for between 3-5 minutes to a maximum of 15 minutes. 

Leading up to the competition, students were asked to prepare and submit a 1,000-word essay on the above motion to present on day. Griffith Law Faculty had the difficult decision of reading and reviewing all essay submissions and narrowing it down to 20 schools to present on the day.

John Eardly, Programme Director, LL. B(Hons) share his thoughts on the day. “It was wonderful meeting a range of schools across Ireland today. It was a real honour being a judge and seeing the high quality of debate that we got to experience”.

Finalists on the day were CBS Kilkenny and Saint Brigid’s Killarney who debated on the motion “This House believes that the age of majority should increase from 18 years of age to 21 years of age.” CBS Kilkenny were crowned this years winners and were ecstatic when Karen Sutton announced the exciting news.

Karen Sutton, Head of Law Faculty at Griffith College said “It was a wonderful day enjoyed by all and provided students the opportunity to improve their communications skills, which we aim to achieve as lawyers”. 

We would like to thank all the schools who entered and travelled from afar for today's events. To the law faculty and judges who had the hard decision of deciding who the two finalists were, you did an incredible job.