Knives out at the Longy!

During the final week of the term, the Foundation Year engaged in a three-day cross-curricular project, which was like playing a large-scale game of Cluedo centered around a murder mystery in the Sixth Form Longy!
Pupils were busy interrogating Dr. Stafford, processing a crime scene involved a variety of activities, including analysing “wine”, DNA, fingerprints, and footprints; drawing photofits; profiling criminals; and taking witness statements in various languages. Pupils also wrote tabloid articles, solved puzzles, analysed clues, designed CCTV towers with spaghetti and marshmallows, dug up a skeleton, created crime maps, challenged sniffer dogs, and cross-examined witnesses in the dock.
We were grateful to the 10 outside speakers who came in to start the sessions with an insight into their professional lives, and to inspire the pupils with where the subjects they study in school can take them in life. These included forensics experts, criminologists, journalists, lawyers, police trainers, and sniffer dog handlers – and it was a particular pleasure to welcome back two Old Malvernians; Poppy Underwood (about to start an MA in criminology at Cambridge) and Squadron Leader James Lambert (Expert in Military Policing).
The project culminated in each group creating a display in Big School, with a prize awarded by a former Head of the Special Branch to the group he judged ‘the most likely to solve a crime’.  Most groups did manage to work out ‘whodunnit’, but whether they did or not, all the pupils finished the week with a real insight into the range of professions available in policing and criminology.