The Ethics Cup

The Ethics Cup was created in response to the degradation of public discourse that has been widely observed and decried over recent years—including, for example, fake news, threatened and actual violence against MPs, an emphasis on catchy soundbites over substantive arguments—and as an avowal of the usefulness of the discipline of ethics in improving that discourse.

Ethics Cup matches feature teams of three to five secondary school students competing against each other in discussing an ethical issue from a case set (distributed months ahead of time) and are judged by a three-member panel.

The Cup isn't a debating competition and isn't won by proving the opposing side wrong. Rather, it's a collaborative discussion, with the judges rewarding insightfulness, thoughtfulness and civility. Unlike a debating tournament, the issues aren't presented in a resolution format; rather, each team crafts its own position (based on what it actually believes), with as much nuance as it deems appropriate, with no requirement to disagree with the opposing team.

The Cup is open to any school in the UK. Teams compete initially in one of 11 regional tournaments, in December or January, with the most successful teams advancing to the finals, held in St. Andrews each May. The Department is committed to making the Cup accessible to all schools and pupils regardless of wealth, distance from St Andrews, or tradition of university uptake. Money is made available each year to fund registration discounts and bursaries to cover travel and accommodation expenses for qualifying teams.

The tournament was founded by the Centre for Ethics, Philosophy and Public Affairs as part of its Knowledge, Democracy, and Public Discourse stream.

The most recent Cup featured 69 teams from across the UK, including as far away as Kent.