Judges and Officials

Judges: Schools are normally expected to bring 1 judge per two-person team. High school (grade 10 and up) students can judge at junior competitions but not at senior ones. Adults can judge at all competitions. They do not need to have any experience. Parents of students who are competing are often a good source of judges. Parents do not judge their own children and coaches do not judge their own students. If you are hosting a tournament you should have 1 judge for each of your teams and, if possible, some spares in case a few judges do not appear. If you can provide more judges, that is great. You can never have too many judges -- the more there are in a room, the better. The judges should be briefed by an experienced coach at the start of the tournament and it is best to allow 30 minutes for this. In addition to the briefing judges are given some written guidelines to help them and those are available at this link. Judges fill in ballots during the round and may make comments after the round but do not reveal the results to the debaters. They or the chairpeople bring the scoresheets to the tabulation room at the end of each round.

Officials and scripts: You should try to have at least one chairperson in each room. Judges can chair debates but would rather not if possible because it is difficult to chair, judge and time. The chairperson (also called the Speaker in parliamentary debate) can be a student. The chairperson can read the script and do the timing. If you have enough students, it is useful to have a timer in each room as well. The timer usually indicates time by holding up the appropriate number of fingers. The chairperson's scripts are available by following this link: Speaker's Scripts.