Video transcript
NSW Premier's Debating Challenge 2024 – Years 5 and 6 State Final

[intro music]

SAHANA SHASIDHARAN: Welcome to the state finals of the Premier's Debating Challenge for Year 5 and 6. My name is Sahana Shasidharan from Matthew Pearce Public School and timekeeper today, Kiva Shah, from Matthew Pearce Public School.

Before we begin, I would like to acknowledge that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Dharawal people of the Wodi Wodi clan. And on behalf of the Department of Education, I want to show my respects to the Elders past, present and emerging from the nation of all First Nations peoples.

The affirmative team today is from Matthew Pearce Public School. Their first speaker, Avika Venkatesh; second speaker, Leon Guo; third speaker, Shivank Mohan; and fourth speaker, Sahasraa Balaeswaran. The negative team is from Newington Public School. Their first speaker, Emma Bishop; second speaker, Felicity Kouch; third speaker, Millie Hancock; and fourth speaker, Amelia Yeh.

The adjudicators for this debate are Ally, Neva and Tony. The speaking time for this debate is 4 minutes. There will be a warning bell at 3 minutes, 2 bells at 4 minutes and a continuous bell at 5 minutes. The topic for this debate is that each primary school subject should have its own teacher like in high school. Finally, please take a moment to make sure all mobile phones are switched off. Now, please welcome the first affirmative speaker to open the debate today.

[applause]

AVIKA VENKATESH: In our current status quo, students are learning from class teachers that teach every subject. With our change, students will receive a specialised education, enhancing their learning experience. We define primary school subjects as subjects such as English, maths and KLAs, like those in high school.

Now on to our model. This change will be implemented in 2026. For K to 2, they will stay in the same classrooms, instead of having to move around. Instead, teachers will come to their classrooms. For 3 to 6, it will be organised like how it is in high school, but the different classrooms will be as close together as possible.

A small detail to note is that parent-teacher meetings will be held like how it is in high school, one teacher at a time. Another minor detail for K to 2 is that the timetable will be written on the whiteboard. And for 3 to 6, they will be given a timetable at the start of the week.

Now on to my allocation. I, as our team's first speaker, will talk about how parents will be affected by this change and how students will have an enhanced education through this change. Our second speaker will talk about how this change will prepare students for the future and how reports and feedback will be affected by this. Our third speaker will conclude our case.

Now on to my first argument, the main benefit achieved from this debate, education. In our current world, teachers are having to teach a large range of subjects that they are not an expert at. Because of this, students are not experiencing the best education that they can because teachers are not fully able to always comprehend all the information in every subject.

After this change is implemented, teachers are able to be specialised in the subjects that they are expert at. They will have the ability to understand and will be able to explain the topic and content in an engaging way, where both the teacher and the students will develop a better learning environment. This is important for students because, if teachers are able to provide explanations that are more comprehensive, they can learn information that is more accurately informed and taught in an enhanced way.

Not only will this improved experience apply to the main subjects like maths, English and science, but also to co-curriculars, such as sports and arts. Sports is vital for a student to develop a better physical stature, and having the right teacher can develop it effectively. In the end, our world will create a better connection with teachers and subjects, leading to an enhanced education which is vital for students.

Now on to my second argument. My second argument is centred around a major stakeholder, parents. Currently, our parents are receiving general feedback from classroom teachers through reports and parent-teacher meetings. However, with our change, parents will be able to receive more in-depth feedback and allow themselves to learn about their child and the education they are receiving better.

How? Teachers will be able to focus on their subject instead of 5 different ones at the same time, instead. This will allow them to give more focused and pinpointed feedback because they have less subjects to work on. Why is this better? Parents will be able to receive unique perspectives from teachers. And this perspective will allow the parents to learn about their child and, therefore, find out their weaknesses and strengths.

Our current status quo does not allow this. And for the reasons mentioned before, our proposed change will allow parents to clearly see how each of their children perform in specific subjects, allowing them to depict how they can improve in their education. That's why I'm proud to affirm. Thank you.

[applause]

EMMA BISHOP: The opposing team stated that this change will improve parents' idea of how kids are going. However, this is completely false as, instead, when this model is introduced, teachers will have to make around 100 reports for each student in each year level, and they will have less time to give detailed feedback for each person.

Good morning, chairperson, adjudicator and audience. We strongly believe that young primary school students must not have to take part in classes with different teachers. We accept the definition from the affirmative team but strongly disagree with their perspective. Our current and effective status quo is that primary students are placed in a class and stick with that teacher for the whole year.

This way is great because students are placed with a teacher that the school knows will best fit them, and they have time to feel comfortable in their class. I will convince you that the affirmative team's model will make the students feel less comfortable, and teachers will feel more stressed. And my second speaker will delve into why needing more specialised teachers is a major problem and cause issues.

My team's first argument will show that this change will lead to a drastic decrease of students' comfort. Let me explain. Right now, kids are spending their whole year with their teacher. They have the time to learn the teacher's name and develop a strong bond with them. Throughout the year, they become more and more comfortable and don't stress when it comes to asking for help because they have this strong teacher relationship and can trust them, just like they would with their parents.

The reason for this is that they have the time to know, trust and connect with their teachers. After the change, with a new model in place, students will be even more stressed. Even if they have a teacher for one period for the whole year, the effect won't be the same, and they still won't be able to settle.

You see, both English and mathematics are taught for one hour each school day, and usually it takes a child 2 weeks to a month to settle with the same class teacher. However, it will end up taking 4 to 6 times the amount of time to settle with a teacher, since there are 6 hours in a school day. This is even more hard and takes longer for subjects like science, history, geography and PE, as they are only taught one to 2 times a week.

Imagine how hard this will be. This is so important, as we want kids to spend minimal time settling, and we want them to feel less stressed in order for them to have the best education as possible.

Primary school education is vital at such a young age, as it is the building block of a good future and further learning in high school and tertiary education. Having the connection with your teachers is more important than parents' learning feedback because, otherwise, they won't get to enjoy the reliability of primary school, feeling more stressed, leading to more mental health issues and directly affecting their education.

My second argument is that this change will lead to more stress on teachers. Right now, primary school teachers have to teach and mark a class of 20 to 30 children. They are able to substitute lessons and reteach or expand on lessons to benefit their students' learning. This is important to show that kids are able to understand the content and learn to their full potential.

Also, teachers have to learn a small amount of names and be able to understand and connect with students. You may be thinking, if high school teachers can cope with this, why can't primary school teachers? Well, high school teachers are trained to teach like this and have a passion for a specific area.

However, primary school teachers aren't used to this and can't cope with marking work for around 100 students, while still teaching all of them and getting mixed up when a class is up to-- and they can't lengthen or substitute lessons because of set periods. This is important because teachers need to have time to be relaxed, and if this model occurs, they won't be. And this will negatively affect students, as they can't relax and learn properly and be relaxed if their teachers are stressed, busy and have scattered thoughts.

Overall, this change will mean that students' learning is negatively affected. And they don't have time to settle properly or will take too long with different teachers. And teachers will be stressed by the amount of students they have to teach. That's why I'm proud to negate.

[applause]

LEON GUO: The opposition stated that this will overwhelm children. However, this is incorrect because the point of beginning this entire program from a young age will be a slow rise to more teachers eventually. They will soon adapt to this change after adapting to it for 7 years. In addition, do you really believe that kindergartens do science, geography, history, all of these extra subjects? No.

They have very limited amounts of subjects-- maths, English and co-curriculars. For 4 teachers, that's enough. Kindergartens will not be overwhelmed, and the slow rise in teachers will give them a smooth transition to the next year, not an overwhelming school life.

The opposition stated that students and teachers can bond, and our change will destroy this. However, this is false because some teachers cannot bond with students because maybe they just don't have that good of a bonding experience. Maybe one teacher is really old, and one student is really young. As well as this, teachers have different skill sets that students need to learn, so having different teachers may actually help them.

The opposition stated that teachers will have less time to give detailed feedback. This is wrong because if we assume that there are 100 students in each grade, this will result in 100 reports for each student. However, currently, assuming that there are 30 students and 7 subjects, this will result in 20 different subjects and students to focus on. Our teachers are overworked, and this change will really relieve the stress of having to learn about numerous different subjects that I'll explain further for 30 students. Thus, our change will make our world for teachers better, and we must follow it.

Now on to my substantive. This change will greatly benefit the most vulnerable stakeholder, which is students, specifically older students going into high school. By implementing our model, the Year 6 students will be given an early chance to adapt to high school. But let me explain this argument further.

Students arriving in high school as Year 7 freshmen are struggling to keep up with all the lessons because, unlike primary school, where every class is in exactly the same spot, each class is in a random classroom somewhere around the school. This is critical to this debate because we all want students, the most vulnerable stakeholder, to transition smoothly from primary school to high school, allowing new Year 7 students to thrive easily without having to deal with the overload of confusion that comes with moving classrooms every subject.

The negative's current world is doing nothing to combat the issue of puzzled students unable to move to each other class effectively and efficiently. Our world is beneficial for students transitioning to high school because it will reduce the amount of confusion and stress our students are facing.

Moreover, this new change will benefit teachers incredibly, especially on the amount of work they are required to complete. By putting this change into place, teachers would only have to focus on one specific subject, reducing the overall stress and work that they carry. To explain this in more detail, we have to look at the current world.

Currently, teachers are tired, overworked and stressed because they have to teach every single subject. They have to plan each lesson. They have to learn about each subject. They have to create slides, and they have to write each report. All of this again and again and again takes a huge mental toll on our largest stakeholder group.

However, our new model creates a world that is straightforward and more relaxing than the world the negative is trying to defend. With only one subject to teach, teachers only need to research one, making them extremely accurate. They only need to create one set of slides and write reports that are specific, detailed and constructive.

This is vital to the debate because teachers are the foundation of schools. If they feel overworked and stressed, the school community crumbles. However, in our ideal world, teachers are happy. They are given the perfect amount of work and are able to hold the school together. That's why I'm proud to affirm.

[applause]

FELICITY KOUCH: The opposition said that kindy kids won't be stressed. But imagine a 5-year-old child. They start in primary school and are having a huge, already, change. They have to be able to trust all these teachers, but this will be extremely hard if their teacher is changing every hour or day. A young child can't cope with all this, as they are just coming from preschool and have never experienced something like this.

Young kids are still 4-year-olds, also, toddlers. They need something they can rely on to stay the same, or school will get too overwhelming. They falsely stated that teachers won't give them a better education. But teachers already have lesson plans planned and the curriculum to follow.

I will go deeper in my argument explaining why the status quo will grant a better education. The opposition stated that teachers won't be overwhelmed. But as you said in your example, you said if there are 100 students to grade, doesn't that mean teachers will have more reports to grade?

They also stated that will be better connection from teachers to kids. However, this is misleading, as teachers and students have to learn all their names, and teachers might get mixed up. You said that this will benefit parents, but you also said that they will have to do multiple interviews. And most parents have multiple kids, and this is too stressful and time-consuming for them.

Good morning, chairperson, adjudicator, and audience. My team's third argument is that if each subject has a different teacher, we will need much more specialised teachers. Right now, primary school teachers are a jack-of-all-trades. And there are 2 options in this debate. Option one is that the normal primary school teachers attempt to teach in a high-school style. They are not as experienced and don't know as much about a specific subject, meaning a below-average education experience for our next generation.

Imagine a class of students who are already missing their old teacher, but they have to sit for 6 hours a day, listen to other teachers trying to go into detail about something they learned 30 years ago. You may think it would be the same amount of education as before, but it won't be, as before the change, it was one cohesive learning experience, where everything linked together.

And this is better for primary school, as this is the style their teachers are used to. So with this style, they will be better at teaching. Besides, kids will already be given the more specific subject experience in high school, so why give them the knock-off version?

Option 2 is that we fire all the regular teachers and hire more specialised high school teachers who are professionals at each of their specific subjects. But here are the downfalls. These trained high school teachers are not specialised for young ages, as they are used to teaching high school students.

For example, imagine a poor little 8-year-old boy being taught by a math teacher who was usually teaching Year 10s. He scolds at the student for not paying attention because he is used to the stricter, smarter and more harsh high school environments, where students are more mature. The young boy goes home feeling ashamed of himself and dreads school the next day. This is an example of what will happen in option 2 if each primary school subject gets its own teacher.

My team's last argument will be elaborating on the cost and how it is not efficient. Primary schools do not have enough money to hire around 10 teachers per grade. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't spend it on more unnecessary teaching.

To hire professional teachers for each subject will cost an absurd amount of money, especially for smaller, rural areas. Imagine how much it would cost to fire all the teachers and hire new ones, and imagine how much time the whole process would take. Not only this, but the Department of Education will have to edit the curriculum and swap it around to fit each new-taught subject. This is why I am proud to negate. Thank you.

[applause]

SHIVANK MOHAN: In my third speaker speech, I will rebut every argument that the opposition team has proposed. First of all, they talked about how there might be massive costs implied when hiring new teachers. And the opposition stated that this change will not be financially viable. This is incorrect, as we are shifting current teachers around, and we will not be hiring any new teachers. And these teachers often have a subject that they are especially good at or experienced at.

Elaborating, the opposition talked about the teacher shortage. In schools right now, teachers are in a class of around 30 kids because teachers aren't enough in school right now. For example, in an average-sized school having 6 teachers, we will be able to move them into appropriate subjects. And this allows them to specialise in their strengths. This system will, instead, take a load off teachers and will definitely not require new teachers.

The opposition said that a cohesive learning experience would be impossible after this change. The opposition stated that children will not be able to have a cohesive experience. This is wrong because, first of all, it's only the normal teachers with the average-sized schools having 6 teachers. So we're looking at your first option. We are not going to be hiring new teachers.

And on the actual argument itself, it is incorrect, as currently, students are getting one monotonous teacher, completely cancelling out any cohesive learning experience. And this is between subjects. This is not in the middle of a subject, meaning that the swapping between subjects will be replaced by another teacher coming in, meaning it will be the same amount of cohesion.

The opposition talked a lot about the stress to teachers. The opposition stated that teachers will have to experience a lot of stress if this change is implemented. However, this is flat-out incorrect because teachers will instead feel the opposite. Currently, in the other team's world, teachers are having to prepare 5 slideshows for almost every subject, every single day for their class. This is more than 20 pieces of material minimum per week.

Teachers will have more stress to try and quickly prepare this. And we already know teachers are working overtime all the time. They have to create-- and not just slideshows. They have to create worksheets, engaging activity. They have to create more homework. This change will take a load off teachers.

The stress-- only having to prepare one piece of homework for 100 people outweighs the work of having to prepare 20 pieces of material for 30 children to create over 200 pieces of material to focus on. In addition, marking the same work will create an easier job for teachers that is much harder than constantly switching between marking English, maths, science.

One of the opposition's other arguments focused on less comfortable students. The opposition stated that this change will result in students not being comfortable. And we have multiple reasons why this is wrong. Firstly, students are only going to have to get used to only around 4 teachers. We often have RFF teachers that might work for one term, roughly a fourth of the year, but we still know their name, personality and how they teach. I'm sure children can apply that for teachers that teach different subjects.

Another reason is that this is what we need to happen. Children can get better at getting used to teachers, something that they need to do in high school. And multiple teachers-- and anyway, younger children that might struggle with this change are anyway going to get less teachers in the first place.

Now on to smaller but nevertheless wrong statements. The opposition stated that this will not give them trust, but this will give them multiple people to trust. That's much better than just one person you trust. The opposition stated teachers and student bonds. As we said before that this is straight-up false. And only some students link with some teachers, and teachers have different skills.

But also, teachers rotate in high school, as well. And as we said before, this can prepare for high school. And also, students even rotate. You might get put into a different class with different people, so you need to be able to bond with all of them. And also, more teachers mean that students can be more social.

Our case has proven that this change will benefit 3 key stakeholders-- parents, teachers and students. We believe that each primary school subject should have its own teachers, like in high school. I'm proud to affirm. Thank you.

[applause]

MILLIE HANCOCK: Today I have noticed 3 main clashes-- how this model will affect the education of students, the practicality of this model and how this model will affect people's mental health. Firstly, how this model will affect students' education. We, as the negative team, know that keeping the status quo will be the best option for students' education because kids will feel more comfortable in class, teachers will be less stressed and, most importantly, primary school teachers and high school teachers are 2 completely different styles of teaching.

My second speaker went into detail about why primary teachers are best for the primary school environment, and high school teachers' system is not. The opposing team said that their model would be more educational, as because each subject would be more detailed, and right now, teachers don't really know what they're doing with the subject.

But firstly, teachers went to university and already learned how to teach these subjects as one teacher. And also, they have a lesson plan and curriculum to advise them. So we know that the status quo-- the teachers who went to university for this particular style-- will be better in this environment than the high school teaching system would.

Secondly, the mental health of students and teachers and parents. They said that you don't need to bond with teachers, as because a lot of teachers aren't very good at bonding. But this isn't a good excuse because most teachers are good at bonding because it's part of the job.

And they said that because some teachers are really old, they won't be able to bond. But just because they're old doesn't mean they're not nice. And if there are some teachers who aren't particularly good at bonding, we want the most amount of people to get the bond.

And they said that you'll be able to socialise with all your teachers, but having a strong bond, one specific, strong bond, is better than a few average ones. Since they said that you'll have more bonds, this contradicts with what they said about not needing to bond with teachers.

They said their model would be less stressful for teachers, but we know this is misleading, as even though they'll now be teaching less subjects, they'll be teaching way more kids. And teachers are expected to learn the kids' names, get to know the kids, find their level and give personalised feedback. So if we expect them to do this for double or triple the amount of kids, it's just going to be so more stressful on them because they're going to have so much more work to do.

And they also said now you only need to do some slideshows. But because you're teaching more kids and a more diverse range of kids, you'll have to adjust these slideshows for every single group of students you're teaching, so it doesn't really make a difference.

They said that kids are now ready for this prep for high school. But the youngest age is 4, who are still toddlers. Are toddlers really ready to prep for high school? And the oldest age is 10- to 12-year-olds. But 10- to 12-year-olds aren't really ready for this constant change either because the society still sees them as kids. They still eat from the kids' menu. They still get kids travel tickets. They're still kids, and they're not ready for this constant change just yet.

You said that this would help with their socialisation, but we have 2 reasons why this is wrong. Firstly, you said K to 2 aren't moving around, so this is only half the students that are moving around and being with different kids. And also, most kids already have a friend group, so they're just going to stick with that friend, and they're probably not going to make new ones.

And lastly, the practicality of this model. They said that this isn't going to be costly, but our second speaker already explained why, if we want the educational benefits of the other team, we need the professional teachers. Also, normal teachers should still be paid extra for this model because of all the new kids they're going to have to teach and the more teaching they're doing.

They also said that we should start prepping for high school as soon as we get to primary school. But why would we spend 7 years prepping for something that you're only going to do for 6 years? You're supposed to spend more time doing it than preparing for it. And also, there's transition to high school. That's why I'm proud to negate. Thank you.

[applause]

ALLY PITT: Hi, everyone. Firstly, on behalf of the adjudicator panel, I want to say that we thought this was an excellent debate. We really enjoyed watching it. We had a very fruitful discussion outside. So firstly, I just want to say a massive congratulations to both teams for making it this far. You did very, very well. You should be very proud of yourselves, regardless. And I think we should give them a massive round of applause.

[applause]

Nothing changes, as usual. There's some general feedback. There's how we saw the debate, and then there's a decision at the very end. So firstly, in terms of some general feedback, we just have one main thought.

And this is something that we think teams did well at times in the debate that we thought could have been a little bit more consistent throughout all arguments and rebuttal, which is, while we thought teams had really good ideas about how this topic might affect things like the ability of teachers to provide good education, or the ability of students to bond with their teachers, at times teams could have been a little bit more focused on zooming in to explain the specifics of how these relationships might change or how these lessons might look different than they might have alternatively.

Again, this happens really well at times. So in particular, explanations of how teachers have to provide reports for more kids versus more subjects are really good examples of that zooming in to explain why you might get a change. And that could be replicated, as well, across other aspects of the debate.

OK, in terms of how we see this debate, we think it comes down to, I guess, 3 key issues-- firstly, on how this affects the education of students; secondly, how it affects their stress levels; and finally, briefly, how it affects parents. So firstly, in terms of how it affects students' education, the biggest way in which students' education might be affected that teams argue in this debate is about how this affects the quality of teaching that they receive at school.

What we hear from the first affirmative speaker is an argument that essentially suggests that teachers aren't necessarily going to be experts or specialised in everything and that having this model will allow them to specialise in particular subjects, which allows them to provide more comprehensive lessons, which means kids ultimately are able to learn more from a better quality of teaching. What we hear in response to this from the negative team are 2 different ways of trying to respond to this.

The first is to suggest, as second speaker, that sometimes it might be difficult for teachers to specialise in things because of the fact that they weren't necessarily trained to. I think this is a little bit in tension with perhaps a more reasonable explanation that we hear at third negative speaker, which is that teachers go to uni, and as primary school teachers, are trained to be able to teach everything in the first place. So it probably is the case that teachers can teach everything right now, and they have a pretty good grasp of it.

This does, I think, respond in some ways to what the affirmative team says by challenging their characterisation that teachers aren't capable of providing good-quality lessons right now because it suggests that they're kind of capable of doing things-- capable of doing almost everything. The second way that the affirmative team tries to make this argument is to, at second speaker, explain that by allowing teachers to focus just on one subject, it would give them more time to prepare for the subjects that they're studying.

So instead of having to create lesson materials for every subject that they are teaching their students, they only have to do it once, and they can reuse that across different groups of students who come into their classes throughout the day. The response we get to this argument from the second and third negative speakers say, well, right now, teachers have lesson plans and curriculum, which we think mitigates, to some degree, what the affirmative team explains here with the production of materials.

However, we think the affirmative team is sufficient to explain that there are other things that teachers have to create for themselves, like ways of explaining things to kids with PowerPoints or worksheets, which we think means that the affirmative team is able to explain that teachers would be doing less work under their side, which is how we think the affirmative team are ultimately able to get to a benefit here of improved education.

While we don't believe it's the case that teachers necessarily are better-suited to teach particular subjects, we think the affirmative team explains that, with more time spent on different subjects, teachers are able to go into more depth. And students are therefore benefited by teachers having a better overall ability to teach them their subject.

The next thing on teachers that we hear from the affirmative team is that teachers will also get less stressed as a result of having to do less work. The negative team suggests, on the flip side, that teachers would have to do extra things because they have more kids. They might have to remember more kids' names, remember where more kids are up to in the classes or whatever. And on the flip side, from the affirmative team, we hear, well, right now, teachers currently have to deal with a lot of information for one class.

We think in terms of dealing with information, it's probably pretty similar on both sides. You're just changing the sorts of information that you're remembering. However, we did think the affirmative team probably was able to point to a reduced workload for teachers in the amount of content that they have to create. So we also thought teachers might be a little bit less stressed there, although we thought it could have been explained a little bit more clearly how teachers' stress levels actively impact their educational capacity for students.

It's kind of said that they are the backbone of the community, while not necessarily explaining how that is actually transferred onto kids. So ultimately, at the end of this issue on education, we thought that teachers would be able to create better-quality lessons in a world in which they were just teaching one subject. And that would mean that students were able to get a better education there.

The second issue in the debate is how this affects stress. And essentially what we hear here from the first negative speaker is that kids right now need to have a strong relationship with their teacher in order to feel comfortable telling the material, and that basically what they need to develop with their teacher is a relationship that in some ways mimics a relationship with a parent. So that you trust them, and you're able to go to them when you need help. They tell us that kids can't develop this over a shorter period of time, and that as a result of having more teachers, it will take them longer to deal with this.

The explanation that we get from the negative team as to why they can't develop this over a short period of time is just tell us that it takes something like 2 weeks. They explain that this would be a sixth of the time with each of your teachers, so it would take a longer period of time before you can have that. We have a couple of responses to this from the affirmative team.

The first, I think, is a quite clever response from the second affirmative speaker to talk about how the amount of subjects that kids study scales. So the youngest kids, who might be the most stressed in kindergarten, are probably only likely to have 3 or 4 teachers, where it's probably the case that all the kids who study more subjects might have to deal with more of the challenge of bonding with many different people.

The second thing that we hear in response to this from the third affirmative speaker is that, under their side, it's possible that you could bond with more teachers and that maybe sometimes you might not like the teacher. We think this is an interesting idea, but we don't think it's explained well enough by the affirmative team why you might not like your teacher in certain circumstances, or even that it is likely that you're able to bond with different teachers in the same way. So we don't think the affirmative here is able to claim a clear benefit on this.

What we do think, though, is in response to the negative team's stuff about kids not necessarily being able to bond, the affirmative team is able to suggest that sometimes it seems like this could happen alternatively. And while we thought that it might be true that there was a length in time difference between the 2 teams, it wasn't necessarily explained to us by the negative team why this length of time difference was so crucial that it could potentially really have a negative impact on students' education or students' stress.

So we thought that it might be true that kids' stress is impacted at times. But we weren't necessarily sure that this was going to be a huge, ongoing impact to how they experience school, especially because it did seem to us that, after a period of time, they still probably would develop those relationships with those teachers. The final idea on stress is an argument from second affirmative that suggests that this would better prepare students for high school, where they might otherwise be stressed.

This is an interesting idea, although I think at times it was kind of unexplained to us by the affirmative team what it actually is about high school and about switching between teachers or classrooms that actually might be stressful to kids and requires that extra understanding. So while we thought it might prepare them, we weren't convinced that this was a huge benefit, where it wasn't necessarily explained to us that kids are so stressed right now.

The final issue of the debate is about parents. Basically, we hear an argument from the first affirmative speaker that parents get more information from their teachers because they have specific meetings with teachers from each subject. I think this is well-responded to and mitigated, though, by the negative team who point out that this probably just changes the amount of the people that you're getting the information for. It perhaps takes you slightly longer in regards to get slightly more information.

And it just wasn't necessarily clear to us that either of these benefits or problems posed to parents were that big of a deal or more important to each other. Perhaps some parents preferred more information. Perhaps some parents preferred efficiency. We just didn't think it was explained enough to be super important to the debate.

So ultimately, at the end of this debate, though we did think at times it would be more difficult for kids to bond with teachers at the same rate, we thought that the clear academic benefit provided to students by teachers who could do extra work and put in extra effort to their subjects rather than normal meant that kids were ultimately going to be better off in a world where they could probably bond with their teachers in either world. So for those reasons, in a close but clear decision, we award this debate to the affirmative team. Congratulations.

[applause]

SAHANA SHASIDHARAN: Thank you for that. Please now welcome a representative from Newington Public School to congratulate the winners.

[applause]

AMELIA YEH: Congratulations on winning the state championship. Thank you for the challenging debate. You are such an amazing team. I'd also like to thank the adjudicators, teachers, parents, Tony Davey and the Arts Unit for making this camp happen.

[applause]

SAHANA SHASIDHARAN: Please welcome a member from the winning team to respond.

[applause]

SHIVANK MOHAN: Thanks for this debate that I think everybody on my team enjoyed. We really appreciated debating with the other team and you used lots of things that we couldn't rebut. But it was a close debate, and we really enjoyed it. Thanks to everybody that made this possible. Thank you so much. Thank you.

[applause]