Co-Curricular Life

Your Sixth Form years are the bridge between school and university. While excellent teaching is at the heart of ensuring you achieve your future goals, universities and employers look for so much more than academic grades. Farnborough Hill is, and always has been committed to ‘educating the whole person’ so you can rest assured that your Sixth Form experience with us will be much more than just academic study.

This is a time for a refinement of ideas and for exploiting all the School can offer you in terms of its extensive network and access to expertise and opportunity, be it university practice interviews, work experience placements or leadership training via the Ivy House Award. Each experience you have here will feed into a top quality university or apprenticeship application, putting you in the best possible position to secure an offer from your first-choice university or employer. We encourage you to be ambitious and commit to working alongside you to ensure you have the experiences and expertise to secure the future you desire.

Leadership

Throughout your school career so far, no matter what school you have attended, you will have seen several Head Girls and Deputies stand on stage and deliver speeches. You will have heard many sixth formers lead Assemblies. You might have had a Sixth Form tutor in one of your classes, or you might have had a subject mentor. You will know your House Captains and will have seen the work they do on behalf of the Head of House; you will have seen Sixth Form prefects assisting at various events and supporting their teacher to promote their subject. You might have thought, ‘that will be me one day, speaking in front of hundreds’, or you might have curled lower in your seat and thought ‘no, thanks’. Regardless of how you feel about taking on a leadership role, this is something that we believe is very important for your personal development, and we will work with you to find the right role for you - one which allows you to develop new skills, enhance existing ones, build confidence and give back to the School.

In the Spring Term of the Lower Sixth, we will invite applications for the Junior Leadership Team, House Captains, and Drama, Music and Sports Captains. A shortlisting and interview process will follow, and successful girls will take up their post in the Summer Term. For those who do not wish to have such a big role, we have smaller, but equally important Prefect roles, including Subject Prefects, Careers Prefect and Chaplaincy Prefect. Each year we love listening to the ideas and suggestions of our new Prefects and look forward to hearing what you have to add. The world never stops evolving, and nor should Farnborough Hill.

In addition to the formal leadership opportunities, you can become a tutor or a mentor for younger pupils. These positions see you work with younger pupils, offering guidance and support on whatever aspect they require.

Extended Project Qualification

On top of their A levels, most of our sixth formers also take the EPQ, the Extended Project Qualification; we will encourage you to do so, too. The joy of the EPQ is that it will take you beyond the specifications of your A level syllabus into broader academic areas that specifically interest you, allowing you to learn more about your subject area. In fact, they can be completely unrelated to anything else you are studying – it is totally up to you what you explore. In undertaking an EPQ, you will have the opportunity to hone so many university-style skills: research, time-management, presentations and so on.

Recent titles have included:

To what extent are tax havens damaging the global development of the economy?
Should the voting age in the UK be lowered to 16?
How has treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder in the army evolved and improved from 1918 to the present day.

Ivy House

The Ivy House Programme is a key part of leadership development at School and is a bespoke course which promises to produce ‘extraordinary leaders’. Ivy House do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to leadership, that you have to have x character or y skill to be a good leader. Instead, each of you will explore your own inner self, what makes you tick, your passions, your drive, your ambitions and weaknesses. At the heart of the programme are the three Ivy House principles; self-knowledge, self-empowerment and self-leadership.

Normally only available to a handful of senior executives, the Award is delivered through a combination of digital content, journal activities and discussions. In the first term, you work on your Storyboard. We all have our own unique story – this puts you in charge of writing yours. You gain a deeper understanding of who you are and become clearer about the life you are trying to create. In the second term, you work on your Game Plan – how to get to where you want to go. There are some crucial skills that make all the difference and will enable you to move forward in a way that is right for you. To borrow a phrase of Ms Callaghan’s: the Ivy House programme allows each pupil to discover and hone their ‘unique gifts and talents’ to prosper in their own way, much in the same way that the School develops musical talent, or linguistic gifts.

While you may already have the nascent skills, informally developed through experiences at school, the Ivy House Award will revolutionise the way in which you think of yourself. Your inner explorations will develop confidence in who you are – and that girl above, who shrunk into her chair, might just end her school career with a speech at her Leavers’ Assembly.

Enrichment

The Enrichment Programme is a co-curricular programme to offer you something extra, something different, as an antidote to the weekly workload that comes with undertaking A levels.

Every year we look to refine our programme to offer new activities and courses and we hope that you are excited and inspired by what is on offer. When putting together the programme, we aim to offer activities that cover all the bases. For example, we know you will be working hard on your academic subjects during the week and a Friday afternoon workout, some yoga or even learning to scuba dive may be exactly what you need to maintain that work-life balance. On the other hand, during the year you may wish to opt for a course that will benefit other aspects of your personal development, which is why, amongst others, we are offering pupil tutoring, TEFL and cooking lessons.

Enrichment activities take place every Friday afternoon and could soon be a highlight of your week. Explore the activities on offer further in the Enrichment Booklet.

Super-Curriculum Guide

RE-Act

The RE-Act programme takes place weekly and brings together Upper and Lower Sixth students to work on community and charity projects.

Run by the RE Department, the programme encourages you to undertake Christian work in a practical and impactful way. Recent initiatives have included working alongside the St Vincent de Paul Society to make hampers for local elderly people.