Our Brilliant Club at Haygrove

A group of Year 9 students have participated in a project last term called the Scholars Programme run by the Brilliant Club, a charity set up to increase the number of students from different backgrounds progressing to highly-selective universities.

The Scholars Programme was delivered in the Autumn term by a PhD tutor from university and the students studied a ‘super-curricular’ topic related to the PhD tutor’s area of expertise.  

The programme we had this year was looking at understanding jury decision making. A group of 13 students were selected for the programme. As part of the programme the students had to complete a university style essay of 2000 words. This was a challenge for some students and those that completed the essay felt a huge sense of achievement as they had never written such a long piece of work before or learnt about such difficult topics.  

The students also got to visit two universities to experience what the environment was like. They visited the University of Bath and the University of Bristol. During these visits the students toured the campus and met with current undergraduate students at the universities. The final trip to Bristol also included a graduation ceremony celebrating the students’ achievements during the programme.  

One of the participating students Maegan said, "The best part of the Brilliant Club was learning new information and debating your ideas! Our tutor was extremely clear with instructions. The essay word count was a challenge for me, however the support I had helped me overcome it and become more confident.  

After visiting the universities, it also made me realise the future options that are available and that university is for me. Overall the Brilliant Club is an amazing learning opportunity."  

Well done to everyone involved!