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ELINOR STEPHENSON: Hi, my name is Eli and this video is going to be about the CHS Combined High Schools representative debating team, which is a great opportunity for lots of students around NSW in Years 11 and 12. So, if you might be interested in that opportunity, keep watching this video to find out more.

INDIGO CROSWELLER: I'm Indigo, and along with Eli, we're the coaches of the Combined High Schools debating team, and we've had the opportunity to do that for a couple of years now, and we're looking forward to hopefully meeting you all at some point if this is something you're interested in.

ELINOR STEPHENSON: So, what is CHS. CHS is the public schools representative debating team, and every year, 3 teams of students are selected to represent public school students around the state in Years 11 and 12, and these students receive a month of training from their coaches before competing at the Sydney Representative Debating Tournament in Term 3.

At the tournament, the CHS team debates in 3 rounds against the IGSA, GPS, and CAS representative teams, which represent private school competitions, respectively. The winner is determined by the team that accumulates the total number of wins and team points across divisions.

INDIGO CROSWELLER: So, what are some of the benefits of competing with the CHS team or even trialling? The first thing is that you just get external coaching from additional coaches with high level representative experience, and that's just going to help you doing extra debating. The second thing is that you get the opportunity to meet other debaters from around NSW, and that's a really exciting opportunity as well.

The third thing is that you get additional competitive debating experience where you make a team, and those are against private school kids who you might otherwise not get the opportunity to compete with. The fourth thing to say is that you get exposure to new and more difficult topic areas which you might not have experienced before, and there'll be another video on this site which explains some of those different topics soon.

We hold trials for the CHS team in mid to late Term 2. Trials will typically consist of between 2 to 3 rounds of debates where students will debate in randomised positions with people that you may, but probably won't, know. Debates operate broadly to the rules of the Premier's Debating Challenge. So, hopefully you'll be familiar with those, you'll be familiar with the format with the kinds of topics you'll get and also the speaking times.

A series of selectors watch the debates and rank students based on demonstrated skill and potential. Depending on the level of interest, there may be caps on the numbers of students who can trial from one school, and in general, the selectors attempt to balance teams between regional and metropolitan schools to ensure that there's a broad representation of students from different areas.

After selections, a squad will be formed and training is done in that squad altogether. At some point during that process of training as a squad, first, seconds, and thirds teams will be allocated. There's typically a large spectrum of experience and level of prior coaching within these teams. Some people might have done a lot of debating before and others might feel relatively new. But the selectors will see some potential or skill in those students and they'll still get that additional training.

Don't be discouraged from trialling even if you feel like you're not at the requisite level or you feel like you haven't done enough debating or received much coaching. You may have that thing that we're looking for. You may make the team anyway, and that's a good enough opportunity to try.

ELINOR STEPHENSON: Awesome. So, in terms of how you actually get to trial, keep an eye on the Arts Unit website, because trials will be advertised there, and also make sure to let your teacher know in advance if you're keen on trialling.

Trials will likely be held in person, but we can accommodate people who need online trials if necessary. So, let us know if you need any help getting into trials or participating in the CHS opportunity. Next up, we're just going to give you some tips about how to make the most of the whole experience, because we want you to have the best opportunity you can and also to learn from trials themselves. The first thing, which is very simple and you should probably be doing anyway, is to read the news.

When you see these kind of topics that you might get at representative debating, they're often a little bit more current or a little bit trickier than topics that you might have encountered before, and so one thing that you can do to be super prepared for those kind of more difficult topics is to make sure you're up with what's happening in the news, to make sure that you have a good understanding of things that might be going on in society at the moment. The second tip is to watch Arts Unit debating videos to learn more about debating and see examples of great CHS debaters in action. You could try to watch previous debates and see what you could pick up from the speeches of speakers who you think are particularly good, and you could also try and prep some of the cases that you might see on those debates so you can practise thinking of really good arguments.

If you're really keen, there are also lots of great university resources on YouTube, which we'll link below. But you could have a look at the University of Sydney for example, and the University of Monash, both of which have produced a large number of resources for more advanced debaters. Finally, make sure to start talking to your teachers early if this is something that you might be interested in. They can also help to get you more resources and to get you even further into debating.

So, that concludes this video. I hope that you're keen to try out the CHS, and if so, I hope that we are your future coaches. We'll see you later this year. Best of luck.