How to run an inter-house debate: format, judging and scoring

A house debate gives pupils who are not on the sports field a way to win points for their house. It also needs more planning than most events: motions, speaking order, timekeeping and judges all have to be settled before the day. This guide pulls together formats from one debating charity and four school pages, and shows the choices you have to make.

1. Pick a format your time can hold

The formats you will meet differ mostly in length.

• A short lunchtime format. A set of house debating rules on a school-platform host (elizabethcollege.fireflycloud.net) describes meetings of about 30 minutes held over lunch. Each side has two principal speakers, a neutral student chairs, and a teacher acts as timekeeper and adjudicator. Opening speeches are about two minutes each, the floor gets about ten minutes of questions, and each side closes in about two minutes, one minute per speaker. The audience votes at the start and again at the end, and the adjudicator takes the change into account along with their own notes.
• A format with four speakers a side. Kensington Aldridge Academy in London ran its 2023 house debating with a first, second and third speaker and a summary speaker on each side. Each speaker had two minutes and could take two points of information. Questions from the floor came before the summary speaker closed.
• A three-minute and two-minute format. A 2018 write-up in the Abingdonian school magazine describes opening speeches of three minutes, questions from spectators, and a single two-minute closing speech per side that two speakers could share. Poor time management was penalised after three minutes.
• A full competition format. The English-Speaking Union (ESU) runs an inter-school competition called Schools' Mace using what it calls the Extended Mace format. Teams are up to five students and three speak at a time. Each speaker gives a speech of up to seven minutes, with the first and last minute protected from points of information. After four speeches the floor asks questions, and each side then gives a five-minute summary speech. The four main speeches and two summaries add up to 38 minutes before floor questions, so this format suits a single showcase debate more than a whole afternoon of house heats.

The ESU's guide to setting up a debate club notes that a Mace-format debate with two speakers on each team typically takes 45 minutes. It also recommends using the same debate format every time, so that speaking order and speech lengths do not need explaining again.

If several houses are to debate in one session, the shorter formats are the realistic ones.

2. Set the motions in advance

Every source sets the motion ahead of time or tells teams which side they have.

• The lunchtime rules say the organisers table the motions and allocate each team a side for each debate.
• At Kensington Aldridge the finals used two motions, and each house debated both for and against, against a different house each time.
• In the Abingdonian write-up, housemasters sent the motions to representatives at the start of March. Topics ranged from drug policy to the one-child policy to artificial intelligence and were described as generally serious.
• The ESU guide explains the usual wording: "This House would ban gambling" has one team playing a government that wants to ban it and the other playing the opposition. It also describes two styles of preparation: short preparation, where teams hear the motion as little as fifteen minutes before, and long preparation, where they have days or weeks.

For a school house event, decide which you want. Short preparation is quick to run. Long preparation gives pupils time to research, which the ESU guide says often builds general knowledge and interest in current affairs. Choose motions your youngest speakers can handle, and say how you will balance sides.

3. Decide who speaks for each house

The sources show different ways to field a team:

• Two principal speakers per side, in the lunchtime rules.
• Four speakers per side, with a mix of year groups, at Kensington Aldridge. The school praised students from each year group working together as a team.
• Two students from each year group in each house, at the school behind the Abingdonian write-up.

Mixed-age teams spread the work and let older pupils help younger ones. Whatever you choose, tell houses the team size, and whether the same pupils speak in every round, before they start preparing.

4. Find judges and write the criteria down

Judges in these sources are mostly teachers: teacher-judges at Kensington Aldridge, teachers at the school behind the Abingdonian write-up, a teacher adjudicator in the lunchtime rules, and a panel of three at Shiplake College in Oxfordshire (the headmaster and two others) for its 2015 inaugural final.

Judging criteria vary:

• The Abingdonian write-up lists evidence, a good structure, properly referenced sources and rhetoric.
• The ESU marksheet used for Schools' Mace scores each speaker on four things: organisation and prioritisation, listening and response (including points of information), expression and delivery, and reasoning and evidence. The ESU summary sheet uses a sliding scale of five bands, from poor to exceptional, out of 15 for the first proposition speaker and out of 10 for every other role.
• The lunchtime rules rely on the adjudicator's notes plus the movement in the audience vote.

Give judges the criteria beforehand and agree what an acceptable marking range looks like. Choose whether the audience vote counts. Appoint a timekeeper, and say what happens when a speech runs over: Abingdon's penalty, a short warning, or none.

5. Turn debate results into house points

None of the sources gives a standard scale, and the schools do it differently.

• Knockout. The lunchtime rules say winners of each round play off in a knockout until a champion is decided. In the Abingdonian write-up the side with fewer points was eliminated, and when the number of houses was uneven, one house was removed from the contest on its points score in the opening heats, even if it won its debate.
• Summed scores. At Kensington Aldridge each house was scored across its debates and the totals ranged from 203 to 233 points. The school gave 20,000 house points to the winner, and the points were added to the house totals at its end-of-term rewards. At Shiplake in 2015, Burr House won the final with 86.3 points, ahead of 85.6 for the runner-up.

Decide before the event whether you run a knockout or a points table. Removing a house because of an uneven draw may feel unfair to the pupils involved, so plan the number of houses to match the format. The size of the prize is yours to set against your other events: use the house points rules guide so that a debate win is worth about what a sports day win is worth, if that is what you intend.

6. A one-page plan

• Format chosen and timed, with the number of debates that fit the session
• Motions and sides announced in advance
• Team size and who may speak decided
• Chair, timekeeper and judges named
• Judging criteria and marking range written down
• Knockout or points table chosen, with house points set
• Room, audience seating and a way to show speech time

Where this fits

The inter-house competition guide shows how a debate fits into the school year. The inter-house event ideas article lists academic events alongside it, and the house points rules guide covers publishing the rules before the event.