COVENTRY University hosted the regional finals of School Tasking, enabling young people to learn about the law through interactive tasks set in style of Channel 4’s Taskmaster.
The finals saw a team from Stoke Heath primary school take the crown – they went on to attend the Champion of Champions final, competing against teams from cross the country and hosted by Alex Horne on June, 18.
School Tasking is an outreach programme ran by The University of Warwick’s Law School, who joined forces with Coventry University to host the finals.
Sabba Anmol, a second-year Law student from Coventry University, has been volunteering on the project and working with the children from Stoke Heath Primary School.
She said: “The whole purpose of the project is to make sure that the law is always accessible to young kids as well as everyone else.
“We’ve been able to create activities to make it easier for kids to understand and by participating in fun tasks it gets them to think in their own way about the law and language.
“As the weeks progressed during the in-school sessions of the competition, we introduced the children to some of the most interesting areas of law and you could tell in their work how much they started to understand so many aspects of it as well as seeing the confidence and enthusiasm grow.”
Tasks included an animation task using Lego which was based on leading English criminal case from 1884 – R v Dudley and Stephens which established a precedent throughout the common law world that necessity is not a defence to a charge of murder – and Release Alex from the Box which required the pupils to solve a number of puzzles to find the code for the key safe to release a tiny little Alex Horne.
Dr Ali Struthers, creator of School Tasking and Associate Professor in The University of Warwick’s Law School, said: “I was so delighted when Coventry Law School joined the School Tasking team, enabling the project to work with even more schools in the local area.
“The regional final was a joy for children, staff and students alike, and the teams were so engaged and enthusiastic throughout.”
