Law School Grand National Debate Tournament in English and Scholarship Competition 2023

The KIMEP Law School Grand National Debate Tournament in English (the “Tournament”) is an annual debate competition for high-school students that takes place in the spring of each year, on the initiative of the Law School and as its form of Intellectual Olympiad. It is open to high school seniors and professional vocational school students in their graduating year from all cities and regions of Kazakhstan. Winners will be awarded scholarships to study Law at KIMEP.

KIMEP aims at motivating secondary students to:

• test and demonstrate their abilities in critical and creative thinking;
• compete with their peers in the art of argument in English;
• get to know and connect with others with similar interests and qualifications;
• make personal contact with others from various regions and parts of Almaty; and
• experience the free expression and debate of ideas at KIMEP.

The Debate Tournament will be held offline for all applicants from Almaty and regions on 25-26 March 2023. The application deadline is 4 March 2023.

Critical Dates (2023):

• 23 January 2023 – Public announcement;
• 4 March 2023 – (a) Mandatory (online and in-person) training and orientation; (b) Registration deadline; (c) Announcement of the Proposition for preliminary rounds;
• 25-26 March 2023 – Tournament, in-person at KIMEP.

Eligibility Criteria

1. Graduating year seniors attending high school/vocational school in Kazakhstan
2. Any citizenship

Application Procedure

• Step 1. Creating team of two. Debate tournament is a team competition. One team shall consist of two eligible students.
• Step 2. Registration online or on-person. (Teams should make sure that the registration is made by on time for the team of two members). Mandatory registration fields for team name, contact and other information for all team members will be required to complete registration.
• Step 3. Applicants are obliged to sign up for the Tournament’s Telegram-channel, to be informed of all news and announcements, get any format and rules clarifications, as well as to receive organizational explanations.
• Step 4. Applicants must actively follow the news at the channel for official announcements.

The total number of teams in the Tournament will depend on the number of registrations.

Debate format

The Tournament will be held in the format of parliamentary debates. There will be three preliminary, qualifying rounds involving all participants, followed by a semi-final round matching up the four teams with the best records and scores, and then a final round between the top two teams.

The preliminary rounds consist of a number of houses (rooms) in which two teams are paired against each other to debate the Proposition in the role of either the Proponents on the right (in favor of the Proposition) or the Opposition on the left (against the Proposition).  Roles of Proponents and Opposition are distributed randomly, and every effort is made to ensure that each team alternates roles in the first two rounds.

The sides for semi-final and final rounds are determined by the flip of a coin immediately before the round begins. The winners of the semi-final round of 4 teams will advance to the final rounds, the losers will debate each other during the final rounds to determine the third and fourth place teams.

The traditional structure of parliamentary debate is as follows:

Judging

Judging of rounds will be based on the persuasiveness of each team and speaker, taking into account their organization, use of logic, and the relative weight of their arguments. Each round will have a winning and losing team. No ties.  The debates will be judged by KIMEP faculty, alumni and top Law students. Each speaker will be rated on a scale between 1 to 10 in the preliminary rounds, both in order to determine the Best Speakers of the Tournament and to break ties in the case of identical win-loss records between teams in the preliminary rounds. Applicants may read the detailed description of the judging criteria Tournament’s Telegram channel.

Formalities for the Tournament

On 4 March 2023 the preliminary meeting with all registered participants of the Tournament will be held in dual (offline and online) format, with strict mandatory attendance. All news, online and offline meetings and other events will be announced at the official Telegram-channel.

Invitation letters with campus access and location directions and the event schedule will be sent to emails. At the entrance to the Tournament it may be necessary to provide the invitation letter – either in a hard or soft copy, and the original personal state ID or passport.

The Tournament will be held in English.

Summary of Scholarship Awards

As per the results of the Tournament six scholarships will be awarded:

Each member of the Tournament first place winning team will receive a scholarship of 100% tuition waiver for International Law (B.I.L.) or Jurisprudence (LL.B) programs at KIMEP University for 4 academic years.

Each member of the Tournament second place winning team will receive a scholarship of 50% tuition waiver for either undergraduate Law program at KIMEP University for 4 academic years.

The Best Speaker of the Tournament will receive a scholarship of 100% tuition waiver for either program of the Law School for 1 academic year.

The Second Best Speaker of the Tournament will receive a scholarship of 50% tuition waiver for either program of the Law School for 1 academic year.

General Terms and Conditions:

1. A wait list will be created in order of personal speaker points and scores to redistribute declined/unused scholarships.

2. The team scholarship awards that are declined or not used due to ineligibility of the awardee for admission to KIMEP will be reassigned by the Tournament Committee to candidates from a waitlist, first to members of the first through fourth place teams in order of team position (1^st -4^th), then by personal speaker points as between them and then to others, in order of personal speaker points. Ties in personal speaker points of non-finalists will be resolved first by the participant’s team preliminary win-loss record, then by either a coin toss or provision of an additional scholarship, in the University’s discretion. The wait list for Best Speaker scholarships will be by individual speaker points, with ties resolved by team preliminary win-loss record, and then by coin toss or provision of an additional scholarship, in the University’s discretion. Individuals may combine 50% scholarships won for team position and individual speaking, but 100% scholarships will be may not be combined, such that a student winning both shall be considered ineligible for the Best Speaker scholarship, but she or he will still be considered Best Speaker of the Tournament.

3. The scholarships are regulated by the general financial aid rules and maintenance criteria (full-time status, minimum overall GPA requirement, etc.)

4. Winners of the Tournament are required to fulfill admission requirements prescribed by the Ministry of Education and Science of the RK and internal admission policy of the University

Those who cannot find a partner to participate in the debate tournament, please contact Sr. Lecturer Sultan Sakhariyev, Chair, Moot Court Committee, Law School s.sakhariyev@kimep.kz