2026 Junior Ethics Olympiad Resources
Welcome to the resource website for the 2026 Junior 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 ethletes (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, but 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 three 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. Your school will be participating with other schools throughout Australia, New Zealand and South East Asia.
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.
An Ethics Olympiad is a competitive yet collaborative event in which students analyze and discuss real-life, and timely, ethical
issues. It differs from a debate in that students are not assigned opposing views; rather, they defend whatever position they believe is right and win by showing that they have thought more carefully, deeply, and perceptively about the cases in question.
Experience shows that the event encourages and promotes ethical awareness, critical thinking skills, civil discourse, international engagement, and an appreciation for diverse points of view.
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 2013 the first National High School Ethics Bowl was run at the University of North Carolina, and it was a great success. Since then each year the top schools from each US state gather at the University of North Carolina for three days of competition.
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.
In 2013 a trial was held involving US schools and Australian schools using video conferencing technology and Skype to bring the school’s 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 schools, and in 2021 we hosted the first Junior Schools Ethics Olympiad.
With the arrival of Covid in 2020 we had we ran online trials 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. It has also meant that we can get easy access to excellent judges throughout the world.
Junior School Ethics Olympiads have proven to be very popular with all events booking out quickly.
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.
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
We will be running the same program in 2026 as we did in 2025 for different schools (from different time zones).
Junior Ethics Olympiad Dates:
-Tuesday 9th June 2026
-Thursday 11th June 2026
-Friday 12th June 2026
-Wednesday 17th June 2026
-Friday 19th June 2026
-Tuesday 8th September 2026
-Thursday 10th September 2026
-Friday 11th September 2026
-Wednesday 16th September 2026
-Friday 18th September 2026
Program for the Day
Start times:
8 am – Western Australia, Singapore & Hong Kong
9.30 am – South Australia & Northern Territory
10 am – ACT, N.S.W, Qld, Tas & Victoria
12 pm – New Zealand
Finish times:
12.30 pm – Western Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong
2 pm – South Australia and Northern Territory
2.30 pm – ACT, N.S.W, Qld, Tas & Victoria
4.30 pm – New Zealand
The program…Please note that this event involves participants from many time zones. Therefore breaks and Heat times will need to be calculated according to your time zone.
Program
– Preparation – 10 minutes – Main Zoom Foyer
– Heat One – 1 ¼ hours Breakout Rooms
– Break – 15 minutes
– Heat Two – 1 ¼ hours Breakout Rooms
– Break – 15 minutes
– Heat Three – 1 ¼ hours Breakout Rooms (Coaches meeting)
– Farewells and Thankyous – 5 minutes
We will be running optional training clinics for students and coaches again in 2026. These will be 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 on this link for a printable version of the 2026 Junior School cases.
- Click here for a printable version of the Coaches Resource Kit. This resource kit includes copies of the score sheet, rules and a guide for coaches preparing a team or teams.
- Click on this image below for a printable version of the 2026 Junior School cases.
- Click here for coaches’ tips.
- 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 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 2026 Senior Schools cases.
Teams
Remember, this is not a debate. You can agree with each others position but Team B can raise questions yet to be considered by team A in order to further the discussion.
Each team 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 materials are prohibited.
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 be located in the 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.
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 or watch the cases beforehand carefully including the linked resources 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…”).
Moderator/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 which 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 when 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—or demonstrably reacting to, team members during a match.
Please note, the moderator/judge can only control the noise within the breakout room. If there are outside distractions, 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 are 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 are final and heats will be totalled at the end of the heat and the results publicised on the following day. 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.
