Lagos stresses importance of schools debate

LAGOS State government has emphasised the importance of schools debate, saying it in no small measure encourages healthy competition, boosts students’ knowledge, spoken ability and vocabulary, among others.

The Permanent Secretary of the state’s Ministry of Education, Mrs

Adebunmi Adekanye, made this observation at a debate topic draw among the school representatives for this year’s Lagos Schools Debate, held last week.

A total of 60 students made the list for elimination stage of the competition from among numerous others from both private and public primary and secondary schools across the state that entered for the competition at the beginning.

According to Adekanye, Lagos State has been holding schools’ debate under the current arrangement since eight years ago, and this year’s edition will be the ninth in the series.

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She said the exercise had been yielding positive results in form of students’ performance in their academics, exposure, public speaking and networking.

Adekanye also explained that the school representatives were brought together for a draw of the topics they would speak on, so as to promote transparency and fairness on the part of the organiser.

“We don’t want to choose topic for any competitor either from private or public schools; that is why we asked them to come to pick topics randomly on their own from the pool of topics. It is what each of them chooses that they will speak on, either in favour of or against,” she stressed.

According to Adekanye, for now, all the competitors will compete among themselves according to their levels of education till the best three at each category emerges for the finals that will be held in early July.