Year 10 students have had a two day experience of life in the sixth form at the start of July. One of the biggest changes for the students has been the small class sizes which has led to really personalised lessons. It’s a very different learning environment with a teacher to student ratio allowing for the highest quality lessons.

The experience has led to students finding out about the sixth form subjects we offer and discovering if they would enjoy taking the subject at sixth form. Before the experience the students ranked what they thought their top six subjects would be in the sixth form. After the experience some students would rank their top six subjects really differently.

Many of the sixth form subjects are not possible to take at GCSE, so this was a really good opportunity to find out more about these courses. Students also found it very different experiencing a sixth form version of a subject they do at GCSE. Really eye opening for them to then make an informed decision as they start to decide on sixth form combinations. During the experience we put on careers sessions for a large proportion of students and these students found them really informative and have helped to formulate future pathways and add a real purpose to their academic journey.

The pictures show the flame tests Year 10s did in their Chemistry experience, the tarts that were being made in the Food experience, the rat dissection and diabetes experiment that were conducted in the Biology experience.