Improve children’s legal knowledge and skills through School Tasking: your time starts now

Abstract

School Tasking is a university primary outreach project that started life as a small pilot at the University of Warwick in the academic year 2021–22 and has since become a national competition in thirty-two universities across the UK and Ireland. The project has two principal aims: (1) to introduce pupils from less advantaged backgrounds to the idea of university (and particularly, legal) study, with the objective to widen access to higher education; and (2) to introduce pupils to the concept and study of law through interactive and engaging skills-based learning. By drawing on the School Tasking project data, this article will focus on the second of these aims, with the intention of showing that early legal education may broaden children’s understanding of law and thereby possibly disrupt their preconceptions about what it is, how it works, and who it is for.