2025 Senior Ethics Olympiad Resources

Welcome to the resource website for the 2025 Senior Secondary Students Ethics Olympiad. The links here will provide you with everything you will need to prepare teams for the upcoming Ethics Olympiad. This information will be particularly useful to anyone new to the Ethics Olympiad. Coaches should feel free to pass this link on to their eth-letes (students).

The Ethics Olympiad has a proven track record of providing teachers and students with a creative vehicle for developing skills in communication, critical thinking and respectful discourse while dealing with important and interesting ethical issues.

Schools have entered 5-10 students to participate in the Ethics Olympiad. At the Olympiad, we refer to students as “Eth-letes” as like athletes they are in training for excellence in ethical thinking. Unlike debating, students can take the position they want at an Ethics Olympiad. They work as a team, with teams from other schools to come up with the best possible answer to difficult ethical questions. 

During the day all students will be involved in a series of four heats where they will be scored according to set criteria that rewards, clear, concise, respectful discourse around interesting ethical cases. Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded to the top three school teams. Gold and Silver medal-winning schools will be invited to represent their region and country at the International Ethics Olympiad final. 

This initiative builds on the very successful Ethics Bowls in the US. The National High School Ethics Bowl is coordinated by the Parr Centre for Ethics at the University of North Carolina. In the United States, tertiary institutions have run “Ethics Bowls” on a yearly basis since 1995. Each US state holds regional Ethics Bowls and this culminates in the National US Ethics Bowl. In 2009 the first National High School Ethics Bowl was run at the University of North Carolina and it was a great success. Each year the top schools from each US state gather at the University of North Carolina for three days of competition.

Since 2013 we have run the Ethics Olympiad adopting the same format as in the US Ethics Bowls. We ran a trial involving US schools and Australian schools using video conferencing technology and Skype to bring the schools communities together. The trial was a great success. Thereby the Ethics Olympiad was born and has been run since then annually with many schools involved. In 2018 we opened the event to Middle and in 2021 we hosted the first Junior Schools Ethics Olympiad. In 2017 we ran trials in Canberra and Melbourne. This involved teams of students participating in a day-long face-to-face program with three heats and a final at the end of the day. Teachers participated as judges in the heats and then tertiary specialists judged the finals. 

In 2020 we had to cancel all the Senior Ethics Olympiads due to the outbreak of Covid19 but we ran online events instead for schools using Zoom and these were sufficiently successful that we decided to run the Middle School Olympiads online and in 2021 Senior and Junior School Ethics Olympiads were conducted online. This has proved to be a wonderful success with many regional and remote schools able to be involved and access to excellent judges throughout the world. Each year we run regional heats for Senior High School students followed by a final in July.

Well before the date of the Ethics Olympiad, the participating coaches are given a packet of case studies that present ethical issues to study. The goal for the teams is not to do research on the cases, but to be able to formulate well structured, logical answers to a single question that is asked about the cases. 

We wish you and your school well in your preparation. Hopefully these resources will assist you.

All hospitals and universities have “ethics” committees, many companies have an official “ethics” code, and lawyers are required to take “ethics” training. But when academic philosophers use the term “ethics” they’re talking about the reason-guided study of what we morally ought to do. That isn’t to say that doctors, companies and lawyers don’t use reason (they most certainly do), or don’t make decisions about what we morally ought to do (they most certainly try). It just means that what makes philosophical ethics distinct is that the ultimate grounding for philosophers’ conclusions is reason itself, as opposed to preferences, company policy, or legal precedent.

Philosophers use reason to form “arguments,” which are composed of a series of claims, called premises, intended to logically support another claim, called the conclusion. They construct, share, evaluate and revise these arguments in a collective effort to figure out what makes the most sense. No conclusion is beyond revision, and any good philosopher is willing to change his or her mind on most any issue, if given good enough reason to do so.

This book was written by Dr Matthew Deaton for High School students in the US. While it refers to the Ethics “Bowl” it is easily understood as applying to the Ethics Olympiad. If you as a coach are unfamiliar with some of the important arguments in ethics this book will assist you greatly. Dr Deaton has made this available freely and so you are welcome to pass this on to your students in their preparation process. Also included here is an “Audio” version of the book.

Click here for a copy of Dr Matthew Deaton’s book written specifically for students participating in the US Ethics Bowl.

Here is a link to audio chapters of Dr Deaton’s book in case you would like to pass this on to your eth-letes;

Ethics in a Nutshell Audiobook Chapter Links

Ch 1: Welcome 00:24

Ch 2: Ethics, Religion & Public Discourse 09:17

Ch 3: Why Ethics Isn’t Ice Cream 14:08

Ch 4: Three Key Distinctions 22:40

Ch 5: The Four Dominant Ethical Theories 30:36

Ch 6: All Things Considered 59:38

Ch 7: Argument by Analogy 1:07:35

Ch 8: Intuition, Reflection & Coherence 1:17:15

Ch 9: Conclusion 1:24:14

Lecture Notes 1:28:13

More Books by Matt Deaton 1:35:19

Further Reading 1:38:45

Program for the Day

*South Korean schools will start one hour later at 10am (KST)
*Indian Schools will start at a slightly different time. To be advised.

All other schools…

Starts 9 am – 9.15 am – Preparation

9.15-10.30 am – Heat One (Practice Heat)

10.30 am -11.45 am – Heat Two

11.45 Morning tea

12-1.15 – Heat Three

1.15 pm – 1.45 Lunch

1.45-3 pm- Heat Four

3 pm – Finish

Click here for the 2025 cases.

We ran optional training clinics for Senior High School students and coaches again in 2025. These were very useful for any participating students or coaches as they will have the chance to meet with experts in the field and some of the judges participating in the Ethics Olympiads.  

                   CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION

• Click here for the 2025 Coaches Resource Kit. This resource kit includes copies of the score sheet, rules and a guide for coaches preparing a team or teams. 

• Click here for coaches’ tips.
• Click on this image below for a printable version of the 2025 Cases.

• Click here for Information relevant to parents. Some of the following information might be useful in your correspondence with parents. Feel free to cut and paste information from this link or you can include the link in your correspondence with parents.

• Click here for a printable version of the 2025 Students (Eth-letes) Resource Kit. This resource kit contains the scoresheet and other helpful information for students preparing for an Ethics Olympiad. 

• Click on this link for a printable version of the 2025 Senior Schools cases.

Teams

• -Remember, this is not a debate. Teams can agree with each others position.
• -Teams should consist of not more than 5 members and no less than three members.
  
• -At the start of each heat, fresh scrap paper will be needed for team members to make notes during the match, but pre-prepared notes and any other materials are prohibited.
• -Teams are permitted to have scrap paper and unannotated copies of the cases only on heir desk during the event.
• -The moderator/judge will keep the official time of each period of the match. Teams may use their own timers with the following restrictions and conditions: the timer cannot be any device that stores data or connects to the internet and a team may not time the portions of the match when the other team speaks or confers.
  
• -Students do not have to be familiar with Ethical theories in order to participate in the event. However, they are encouraged to explore alternate positions to the position they take.
  
• -We urge teams to provide an outline of their presentation when it begins—that is, the team should explain who will be discussing which aspect(s) of the case and why. —-This way, a moderator/judge will know what kind of presentation to expect.
  
• -Students are encouraged to read the cases and the linked resources carefully beforehand to understand the full breadth of the cases, determine their positions, and make the strongest possible presentation. Although teams may use outside research to prepare for a match, they should not assume that merely presenting factual information will impress the judges. Teams need to propose valid, sound, persuasive arguments that are buttressed by facts to score well. If a team introduces a specific fact not contained in the case, the team should cite the source (e.g. “according to a 2011 article in National Geographic…”).
• -Please make sure your ‘microphone’ is turned off unless your team is invited to speak by the moderator/judge during your assigned times.
  
• -During private conferences (the 2-minute conference or one-minute conference), students should ideally be located in one room, in which case they can turn their microphone off. If team members are located in multiple locations due to a covid lockdown they will need to organise a separate online forum for team meetings. If they are using this facility they must not be speaking on that forum at any time apart from the allotted team conference times.
• Moderator/Judges
  
• -Judges should direct their questions to teams based on the discussion, not to individuals.
  
• -The moderator/judge can allow a team to finish a sentence once time has expired.
  
• -A timer will be used so that everyone can see. But if for some reason that is not working, teams will get two standardized time notifications from the moderator/judge during their presentations: one three-minute warning and one one-minute warning.
  
• -The moderator/judge controls the room during matches and should address any unacceptable behaviour, including, but not limited to: Coaches, parents, or audience members communicating—verbally or non-verbally.
  
• If there are outside distractions, noise interference,  it is up to the moderator/judge, not a coach or a parent, to decide if the round should be paused.
  
• -Teams must answer the case question during their presentation period. Teams are judged and scored on how well their members clearly and systematically address and respond to the question asked.
  
• -Teams will not be penalized or rewarded whether one person speaks or everyone in the team contributes. Judges should neither penalize nor reward a team for using either approach: both are welcome.
  
• -When one team confers or speaks, the other team and any audience members must remain silent, although writing and passing notes is permitted. (For example, when Team A is given the case and question, they are allowed to confer for two minutes and then present for five minutes. During those five minutes, Team B is permitted to write notes but must remain silent.
  
• -The decisions of the moderator/judges is final and the heats will be totalled at the end of the day and the results publicised within 24 hours. Where there is a tie, the Head judge will select the winner from the following process. The highest scores in the first heat….if that is still a draw the highest score in the second heat and so on.
  
• If there is a complaint or challenge to the results this should be put in writing to the organisers.
  
• -The results will be emailed to supervising teachers and moderator / judges.