By Community Correspondent Maria D’Silva

On Saturday 20th March 2010, Ursuline High School in Wimbledon competed in the National Finals of the prestigious National Bar Mock Trial Competition held in Parliament House, Parliament Square in Edinburgh, Scotland. After triumphing at the Regional Heats, where they beat 15 other state and private schools from across London, the girls travelled north for the elite final against the top schools from all over the UK where they performed outstandingly.

The Bar National Mock Trial is now in its 19th successful year and annually sees the involvement of over 2000 students, 200 barristers and 90 judges from across the UK. A team of students use carefully constructed witness statements to prepare the prosecution and defence of two specially written criminal cases and compete against other schools in a live format, with one team prosecuting and the other defending. The students take on various roles including barristers, jurors, witnesses and court officials.

The Ursuline team has worked exceptionally hard over the past few months; this hard work and dedication was clearly demonstrated in their immensely strong performance at the National Finals. However, this year the competition was immense and even after three amazingly powerful performances they were denied victory by some astonishing talent from across the UK. Adrian Colton, Leader of the Northern Ireland Circuit commented, “Regardless of who wins, the marks I’ve awarded are higher today than to winning teams”.

This is a brilliant achievement for the team and an invaluable experience. Everyone embraced Scottish life and had a wonderful time, Tessa A-Tabirade, a juror for the team, stated, "Everything about the trip was so much fun; us being together summed up the whole experience."

This really was a demonstration of promising young talent at its best and the girls should be very proud of themselves. Congratulations to all the schools who took part in the competition, the display of talent was phenomenal and illustrates that the future is very bright with hard working young people ready to take their talents to higher levels.