Thirteen students from Years 8 and 9 travelled to Worcester Magistrates Court this Saturday to take part in the Citizenship Foundation 2016 competition. This was the culmination of several months of weekly practice of their roles and analysis of the law and the case in question.

All members of our prosecution and defence teams gave excellent and confident performances. Our magistrates were diligent and alert to the process and legal points. It in no way detracts from the excellent team performance to single out a few for particular mention. Meeraz Bachu volunteered, at the last minute to take on the role of Court Reporter and was able to give an interesting insight to the performance of some of the other schools. Guy Mitchell stepped into the breach to represent both Prosecution Lawyers and was impressive, especially in his cross questioning of the Defence Witness. Alistair Ryan remained calm and effective as the Defendant under a barrage of very aggressive cross questioning.

It is fair to say that we were surprised that the school, who we had contended as the Defence, won overall. Even our magistrate adviser, Mr Peter Spicer, identified a number of errors on their part. We feel therefore that we can realistically assume, whilst still awaiting the actual assessment, that the marking must have been very close. As ever, our students demonstrated good manners and generosity of spirit in spontaneously volunteering congratulations to the winning school.

Hopefully Year 8 students will be galvanised to take part again next year and Year 9 students to take on the Bar Court competition designed for year 10 to 13 next year. Well done all.