The challenge | A significant proportion of students apply for competitive courses such as Medicine or Dentistry. Finding ways to draw links between the curriculum and the outside world was essential for the girls to appear at their best during the application process.

The method | Each Science department developed activities to support this goal:

  • In Physics, Year 12 students researched and presented a topic of personal interest linked to Physics
  • In Biology, Year 12 students produced a scrapbook in which they summarised and evaluated articles linked to the subject which they found particularly interesting
  • Chemistry oversaw the production of HBScientist, the school’s Science magazine which was entirely written and edited by Year 12 students
  • Wider reading displays were generated in the Science corridors
  • The Science teachers recommended fiction and non-fiction books which were put on the library’s Amazon Wish List
  • In Biology, students were asked to visit an exhibition over the summer holidays and research an aspect they found interesting

The impact | Encouraging students to share research and reading experiences made not only students but teachers more enthusiastic about their subject and its applications. The project gave us an incentive to conduct surveys every year. In the most recent survey, 70% of the students felt they were encouraged by the school to complete wider reading. When asked to break this perception down, students thought that wider reading was useful for university application (77%) and university interviews (79%).

Contact | Dr Flore Faille ffaille@hbschool.org.uk