Celebrating a year of successful work with schools and colleges

Thursday, 08 August 2013

Over 110 young people from across the South of England experienced a taste of student life at the University of Reading recently when they took part in the our annual two-day Summer Schools in Languages, Biological Sciences, Mathematics and Chemistry run by the Student Recruitment and Outreach team.

As well as the ever-popular Science ‘DNA Whodunnit?' event and the ‘Living Languages' Summer School, this year saw the introduction of the University's first ever Mathematics Summer School. AS students had the opportunity to try their hand at different types of maths and its application and interact with students studying Mathematics programmes at Reading.

All Summer Schools were attended by sixth formers currently undertaking study in the relevant subject areas and designed to provide participants with an enjoyable but academically challenging experience. The Schools also as gave them an insight into University study and possible career choices after they graduate.

Meeting current University of Reading undergraduates enabled them to hear what it is like to be a student at University; a really important element of the School, as many of the students attending had no background of higher education in their family.

Reading Scholars Scheme

The University of Reading Scholars Scheme is a new, intensive programme, which started as part of the University's Access Agreement outreach work for 2012/13. Over 35 high-achieving and talented year 12 students from targeted schools and colleges attended a number of intensive events in the areas of Biology, Chemistry and Languages, took part in e-mentoring with current undergraduate students in these areas and ended the year with Summer Schools in their related area to draw together their year of the ‘Reading experience'.

The Chemistry Summer School, delivered by staff in the School of Chemistry, Food and Pharmacy, ran over two days and saw students take part in a succession of lab-based sessions to learn new skills and experience studying in these fields.

The Biology Summer School was a three-day event delivered by Dr John Schollar, Director of the National Centre for Biotechnology Education and featured a programme of lab-based activities looking at the area of Synthetic Biology. This was an exciting experience for the students, as Reading is now one of the first Universities in the UK to do work with school students in this area and use some techniques that are considered to be fairly new areas of Science.

Emma Green, Year 12 student from Queen Mary's College in Basingstoke on the Scholars Scheme Biology programme, said: "Not only were the events really enjoyable, but they were also incredibly valuable... it's good to take something away from the sessions that we had and I did."

These Summer Schools were a fitting finale to a year of outreach events and activities run by Student Recruitment & Outreach in conjunction with departments across the University, such as Environmental Sciences, Biological Sciences, English Literature, Modern Foreign Languages, Food and Nutritional Sciences, Meteorology, Maths, Law and Chemistry, as well as numerous ad-hoc interactions with schools.

Carey Singleton, Director of Student Recruitment and Outreach said: "I'm really delighted with the success of the Summer Schools and, in particular, with the numbers attending the events this year. It's been an absolute pleasure to welcome these high-achieving, focused and committed young people to our campus and we hope to meet many more of them in the future when we expand Summer School provision to other subject areas".