Collingwood is one of the country's leading debating schools, regularly competing and achieving success in prestigious national and international competitions. Debating promotes effective communication, open-mindedness, the ability to consider multiple perspectives, and helps students to develop valuable skills in public speaking and critical thinking.

The Collingwood College Debating Society is a weekly club for students who love to debate politics, ethics, current affairs and anything else that promotes strong opinions based on reasoning and evidence.

Our debating society has been running for almost 10 years and has gone from strength to strength. From just a few dedicated debaters in our early days, we now regularly have between 30 and 40 students from Years 7 – 13 debating every week. Our large numbers allow us lots of different activities each week from feisty show debates with 40+ students getting worked up in response to the open floor debate, to rigorous debate training sessions delivered by senior debaters and Mr Baird in different rooms depending on ability and experience.

Like most competitive activities, our real passion is for national and international competitions. Collingwood College debaters are now ranked amongst the top few schools in the UK and internationally. Our top two students currently debate for England, including the Captain of Team England and Mr Baird has worked in the past with Team England and has judged the World Schools Debating Finals in Qatar as well as numerous national competitions.

In the past year our Junior team reached the International Finals in Cambridge and won the best individual speaker prize. Our students have won both the Durham and LSE competitions as well as best speaker in the world in the Cambridge Union Schools competition.

This success has brought wider recognition with our Debating Captain recently invited to Parliament by the Labour Party to discuss the importance of debating in state schools. Debating in the UK is typically the reserve of top fee-paying schools who have dominated competitive debating for decades. Collingwood College is paving the way for state-educated students throughout the UK and our success demonstrates that our students are capable of anything given the right training, the right opportunities and lots of hard work.