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Group by skill, not by age
Placeholder essay. Why our P6s and Sec 3s sometimes sit in the same room.
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The default is wrong
Most debate programmes group by year level. That makes scheduling easy. It also makes the room dead, because half of it is bored and the other half is lost.
What we do instead
We band by what a student can already do: case construction, rebuttal speed, signposting, point-of-information reflexes. A confident P6 and a hesitant Sec 3 belong together, until one of them outgrows the room. Then they move.
What parents ask
The first question is usually whether the older child will be embarrassed. In our experience the answer is no, because the work is the work. Nobody who has lost a round to a P6 forgets it, and the lesson lands harder than any lecture.