21 July 2011 Dhaka. On 16th July the final round of inter-school debate competition 2011 was organised by BRAC Education Programme in NAEM (National Academy for Educational Management) auditorium.
Students from 750 High Schools from 47 districts and teachers from 232 High Schools from 58 districts participated in this competition which started at the beginning of this year. Participants had to go through different levels of competitions: inter-school, inter-subdistrict, inter-district and lastly inter-divisional level. In the final round of the teacher debate Lohagora Pailot High School (Narail) beat Baksh Mahmud High School (Feni). Mollah Md. Moniruzzaman, teacher of Lohagora Pailot High School (Narail), won the best debaters (teacher) award.
In the student debates, Mohalchora Pilot High School (Khagrachori) became champion and Rudroboira Girls’ High School (Jamalpur) became runner-up. Chen Chen Nu, student of Mohalchora Pilot High School (Khagrachori), won the best debaters (student) award.
A welcome speech by Mr. Asif Saleh, Director of BRAC Communications kicked off the final round, while Dr. Safiqul Islam, Director of Education Programme, presided over the event.
Dr. Kamal Abdul Naser Chowdhury – Secretary of Ministry of Education was chief guest of the inter-school debate competition. Other high level government officials were present in the event.
This is the third time Mentoring Programme under BRAC Education Programme organised this competition around the country. The objective of Mentoring Programming is to engage high school students in co-curricular activities and grow leadership skills in them. It creates logical attitude among the debaters. They not only learn from textbooks, they need to go through national and international news, articles and books to prepare themselves on various issues of debate competitions. The process of debate allows participants to analyse the similarities and differences between differing viewpoints, so that the audience can understand where opinions diverge and why. Debate is also an excellent way to model the analytical and communicative processes that students are learning. It helps them to build up confidence level to speak in public fluently and effectively. Youth are the future of our country and well-being lies on the shoulders of them. To take our country forward we need to prepare our youth for the future.
