This month, LAE students took part in a murder by joint enterprise trial in a real court.

With information from a real-life case, students prepared their roles in advance, studying witness statements and planning their cases to take on the roles of judge, clerk, barristers, solicitors and eyewitnesses.  With two court hearings occurring simultaneously around the same mock trial, this was an exceptional experience for both budding lawyers and those with an interest in forensic psychology .

We were extremely proud of how articulate, critical and engaged our students were, and we saw some heated exchanges during the two court hearings. With teams of students trying and defending the same case, the outcomes were vastly different in each trial with the defendant found guilty in one and not guilty in the other.

This experience links into Forensic Psychology as studied in Year 13 and was a great experience of the British judicial process.  Students got first hand experience in exploring the causes of crime and ways of dealing with criminal behaviour such as prison and restorative justice.