High Achieving Pupils
We are determined for everyone to succeed. For those of you determined to achieve the highest grades, we offer a range of projects, initiatives and support directly tailored to help you achieve them.
Curriculum
Our curriculum options offer a broad range of subjects, carefully selected to make as many courses available as we can, and to allow many combinations of facilitating subjects to be chosen. This means that, if you have a particular career or university course in mind, you should be able to study all of the courses required by your chosen path. We continue to offer many courses as A levels, including all of the sciences, Maths and many humanities subjects. These courses are still seen as the gold standard for many prestigious and competitive university courses. In addition, we also offer a broad range of qualifications for those students who wish to excel in different areas.
Pathways
By aligning our subjects into pathways, we put you together with like-minded students studying similar courses. This gives you the opportunity to work together with them on your subjects, set up study groups, and work with subject specialist academic mentors. It also means that you have a Head of Post 16 focused on your achievement as a group, addressing the needs of your subjects and finding ways to support and extend you in your studies.
Widening Participation
For those of you who are unsure about applying to university, or if you are very sure that you wish to go, we offer a range of initiatives. Many of these are offered in conjunction with universities and employers and give you a chance to further explore your options. Some of these initiatives will result in students being considered for contextual offers from universities. This means that in some cases, Universities will consider lowering the grade requirements required to study with them. This can help give you more of a chance to study at some of the best universities in the country. We have a range of other initiatives that will empower and encourage you to explore a career, or just to improve your skills in areas you are less familiar with, but that may be vital to you at university or the world of work
Supported study
Each year we put on a range of additional study sessions. We run one-off events around specific subjects, exam and curriculum masterclasses for many subjects, and host study clubs for you to work with your peers on improving your grades. In order to succeed, you have to work hard. Wherever we can, we will support this hard work through all of our initiatives. In addition to extra sessions, we offer extended seminars for small groups of students to explore their subject interest. We explore content through report writing and discussion, which prepares you for university study. We also establish realistic aspirational study plans and 1-1s which help to focus those of you that are aiming for the top. By agreeing actions and reviewing targets, we can keep you motivated by recognising all of your successes.
Enrichment
Through a range of enrichment activities, we aim to support our students in broadening themselves. You are actively encouraged to take part in these, and to develop your own if you wish. Some of these enrichment activities will open your mind to new possibilities to excel in fields you were previously unaware of. We want to watch you flourish, and we are keen that you take an active part in this development of yourself as a successful young adult.
Aspiration
Applying for the most prestigious universities in the country is a competitive process. We recognise that you will want to show yourself at your best. We are involved in a number of initiatives to help you to understand what these universities want from you, and how to represent yourself as well as you can. We take part in a range of events aimed at supporting you with Oxbridge applications, and our widening participation schemes allow us to work closely with other prestigious universities in order to offer you guidance and support to achieve.
Ready for the next step
In order to better prepare you for further study, we run a voluntary seminar and discussion group each year, which encourages you to consider your studies in a new and challenging way. You will have the chance to select a topic area from your studies, write an extended report, and take part in a seminar-style discussion of your report, with peers and teachers. It offers a small insight into University study, or the world of work, and allows you to develop your areas of study beyond the curriculum, which can be very useful to those of you that will be interviewed for your desired university place.
