YEAR 6 MOCK TRIAL COMPETITION 2025
About the competition:
The competition involves the children acting out a trial in which they play all the major roles: Magistrates, solicitors, defendants, witnesses, and court officials. They will be supported by volunteer Magistrates from the Greater Manchester Magistrates Association.
Each team would comprise 7-10 students supported by their teacher. A magistrate from Greater Manchester will be assigned to act as the Liaison Magistrate for the school, to help with any questions and visit the school to talk with the Year 6 students in advance on request.
The competition provides a chance for the pupils to work as a team, demonstrate their verbal reasoning abilities, and gain valuable experience and confidence in speaking in public.
There will be a certificate of attendance for all participants and prizes and trophies for the winning teams. There will also be a prize for Outstanding Individual Performance in each team, and the winning Court Artist, and Court Reporter entries. For further information about the Court Reporter and Court Artist roles, please see the relevant page using this link ... Court Artist and Reporters ...
We hope that The High Sheriff of Greater Manchester will again be able to attend to personally meet the children and present the awards. Court Artist and Court Reporter awards will be presented after the event.
In previous years, throughout the day other activities were arranged to further engage the students and reinforce key messages around keeping safe in the community. There were exhibits and activities organised by Greater Manchester Police, Travel Safe, British Transport Police and Early Break. In addition, Greater Manchester Fire and Rescue Service provided a fire engine and crew to talk to the pupils in the yard on all aspects of fire safety.
In addition to this, last year we held a Knives: Choices and Consequences interactive quiz workshop for all the students, which fitted in with the mock trial topic of Possession of a Bladed Article in a public place.
We are planning to have similar additional activities available for students at the 2025 event.
