posted 8th September 2025
Any personal trainer will tell you that having a strong core is essential to all round fitness. Your core consists of the muscles at the centre of your body: abdomen, pelvis and back. If you spend all your time building up massive thighs and biceps but neglect your core, your body will be unbalanced, unstable and liable to injury. If you look after your core, your movements will be more balanced and stable and you will be at less risk of injury, improving your performance in both sport and daily activities.
This is also true of debating. The core muscles you need to work on in a debate are your core values. Just as everyone’s body has an abdomen, a pelvis and a back at its centre, so every debate has values at its centre. Core values are the fundamental principles behind a motion; the big ideas which power it. Finding core values means stepping back from the more immediate, practical arguments for or against a motion, and taking a longer view. A successful debater will find those values, focus on them, and keep returning to them, in order to build the strongest case possible.
Let’s take an example. The motion is This house would reintroduce grammar schools. (Grammar schools are non-fee-paying state schools which select their students by an exam taken at the end of Y6, accepting only the highest ability students. They were mostly replaced with non-selective schools in the 1960s and 1970s; only a few remain.)
If you’re the proposition, you could list some of the many successful people from humble backgrounds who rose to the top of their professions and achieved great things thanks to their grammar school education. If you’re the opposition, you can point to evidence from the few areas that still have grammar schools showing that overall GCSE results there are worse than those in areas with non-selective schools.
These are both sound, solid arguments. But they will be stronger still if they are based in the core values behind the motion. To find out the core values, you need to ask this question: How does someone who supports / opposes this motion see the world?
So how does a supporter of grammar schools see the world? They are likely to see excellence and achievement as being the most important values. They have no problem with the majority of children being excluded from grammar schools; it is more important to promote excellence and achievement in the most able. So, rather than claiming that David Attenborough might never have been able to make his nature programmes if he hadn’t been to grammar school, they should say that people who achieve excellent standards in science benefit all of us through their discoveries and work (for example, David Attenborough’s groundbreaking work in explaining the science of climate change to the general public). This is a stronger argument, as it is based on the central values of selective education, rather than a random selection of its products.
And how does an opponent of grammar schools see the world? They are likely to see inclusion and equality as the most important values. So they will want all children, whatever their ability, to be given the best possible education. So, rather than just wheeling a lot of stats about GCSE results in Kent (which still has grammar schools) against London (which doesn’t) and leaving it at that, they should start by saying that grammar schools exclude the majority of students, and distribute resources unequally. This leads to overall results being worse. In a non-selective system where all students are included, and resources are distributed equally, all students will perform to the best of their ability. Then you can bring out your Kent / London stats in support of your core argument.
Look after your core values, and your arguments will be fighting fit.
