REPORT ON THE MOCK TRIAL
The Mock Trial Competition takes place every year in March and is run by the Citizenship Foundation in London. It gives schools the opportunity to compete against other schools in the local area by performing a mock trial in the Magistrates Court. Our Year 9 students have been preparing for the trial during their Interest Module lesson on a Wednesday afternoon. As well as rehearsals they also took advantage of visiting Burnley Magistrates Court during a live court session to let our students see, first hand, what goes on in a real court. They also took advantage of UCLAN's invitation to visit their moot court room, which is in the new Burnley College building for one of our rehearsals.
The trial was performed twice in the competition, once as defence and once as prosecution; our opponents were Blessed Trinity and Southlands from Chorley (the eventual winners).
Our three Magistrates were Ben Atkinson, Josh Stuttard and Brendan Cooke-Allman. Sam Whitaker-Hoban was a very convincing Legal Advisor, Ethan Aitken played the part of the Usher and our two Defence Lawyers were Kieran Stockdale and Molly Carter. Our prosecution team were Scarlett Morris and Sam Johnson. Yasmin Roberts played the part of our defendant, while Maria Shah played the part of her sister the other defence witness. Megan Lambert was a police lady and the first prosecution witness, while Anthony Tither was the landlord and the second prosecution witness. Last but by no means least Brandon Incles was our court reporter and court artist; Brandon's report and sketch will be submitted to Citizenship Foundation to be entered in a separate competition. Anthony Tither won the prize for the most convincing character.
All the students enjoyed their experience and have commented on how this competition has really increased their confidence. They are now looking forward to going to London in April to visit Parliament where they will continue the theme of Law by doing a workshop called 'Making Laws'. They will also have the opportunity to meet our MP, sit in the public gallery and have a tour of Westminster. The trip to London is over two days so there will also be time to go on the London Eye have a Thames River Cruise amongst other sightseeing activities.
Mrs Hancock