The World Schools Debating Championships (WSDC) is a truly global competition for high school debaters. The Championships take place each year in a different country, hosted by a national debating body. Recent host cities include Seoul (2007), Washington DC (2008), Athens (2009), Doha (2010), Dundee (2011), Cape Town (2012) Antalya (2013), Thailand (2014), Singapore (2015) and Stuttgart (2016). This year’s WSDC will be hosted in Bali.
All debates take place in English. Each country can submit a squad of 3-5 students under the age of 20 in full time education in that country to debate social, moral and political issues.
South Africa has participated in every WSDC since 1998. We have become recognised as a country that regularly sends top-class debaters to the competition, breaking to octo-finals or higher at 13 out of the 16 championships we have attended. Our best team performance was in 2016, when South Africa was ranked the Best Schools Team in the World. Our best individual ranking was achieved in 2009, when Daniel Kaliski ranked first in the world and matched again in 2015, when Kate Dewey ranked first in the world!
Most recently, Ivan Buckland ranked first at WSDC in 2020 with the team making it to octofinals and breaking second!