How a school debate works, and what each of the three speakers does
Jehiel Pather, NSW State Team
· 6 min read
The short answer
A school debate in Australia has two teams of three. The affirmative supports the topic and the negative opposes it. A team wins by showing that its side leaves the world better off than the other side does: its benefits minus its harms outweigh the other team's. The first speaker sets up the debate and presents the main arguments, the second speaker spends most of their time rebutting and adds an argument, and the third speaker responds to the other team and explains why their team has won.
This is the first lesson a new student gets from us. It's short on purpose. Most students who struggle in their first few debates don't lack ideas. They don't yet know what their speech is for, so they spend four minutes saying true things that don't help their team win.
The format: two teams of three
Almost every school competition in Australia uses the same shape. One team is the affirmative, which agrees with the topic. The other is the negative, which disagrees. Each team has three speakers, and they alternate: first affirmative, first negative, second affirmative, second negative, third affirmative, third negative. Some competitions add a shorter reply speech at the end.
How a debate is won
The goal is to show that your team's net benefit is greater than the other team's. We write it on the board like this:
Your benefits − your harms > their benefits − their harms
The word that matters is comparative. An adjudicator isn't asking whether your arguments are true in isolation. They're asking which side of the topic leaves the world better off, and they need you to do that comparison out loud. A good argument that never gets weighed against the other side often loses to a smaller argument that does.
The second thing we teach in this lesson is that harms can be lost benefits. If the negative can show that the topic takes away something good that exists now, that counts against the affirmative as much as a new problem would.
What each speaker does
First speaker
The first speaker's job is to set the debate up. That means:
- defining any words in the topic that could be read more than one way;
- in a policy debate, giving the team's model, which is the specific version of the policy the team will defend (we cover this in models and counter-models);
- presenting at least two arguments;
- and, for the first negative only, rebutting what the first affirmative said.
Second speaker
The second speaker is mostly a rebuttal speaker. We tell students to spend more than 70% of their time responding to the other team's first speaker. They also weigh the arguments against each other, and they can add one more argument of their own. New second speakers tend to do the opposite: they read out a new argument they wrote in prep and leave a minute at the end for rebuttal. That hands the other team an unanswered case.
Third speaker
The third speaker summarises the debate, responds to the other team's case, and explains why their team wins. The best third speeches are organised around the two or three questions the debate actually turned on, not a speaker-by-speaker recap. If you can tell the adjudicator what the clash was and why your team won each part of it, you have done the job.
What to practise first
Take any topic and fill in the four boxes above, benefits and harms, for both sides. It takes five minutes and it builds the habit that separates beginners from good debaters: thinking about the other team's best case before writing your own. From there, the next lesson is how to build an argument that holds up.
Common questions
- How many speakers are on a debating team?
- Three. The format used in most Australian school competitions has a first, second and third speaker on each side, and they speak in turn, alternating between the affirmative and the negative.
- What does the first speaker do in a debate?
- The first speaker sets up the debate. They define any ambiguous words in the topic, give the team's model if it's a policy debate, and present at least two arguments. The first negative also rebuts the first affirmative.
- What does the third speaker do in a debate?
- The third speaker summarises the debate, answers what the other team has said, and explains why their team has won. They shouldn't bring in new arguments.
- How do you win a debate?
- By showing that your side's net benefit is bigger than the other team's. Adjudicators compare the two sides, so an argument only helps you if you explain why it matters more than what the other team has said.