by Niamh Goodacre, Luke Skeats and Niamh Brown, Year 8
This year a group of twelve Year 8 students were chosen to participate in a program called ‘The Brilliant Club’, a charity that “exists to increase the number of pupils from under-represented backgrounds progressing to highly-selective universities” by working with PhD students to share their expertise in state schools. Our course involved so many amazing experiences including a visit to Durham University, working with a PhD tutor from Newcastle University and meeting our local MP, Alan Campbell.
The objective of the course was to write a 1500 word assignment on the causes of the French Revolution – a topic which was completely new to us. The process involved meeting once a week in school to discuss different aspects of the topic in a university style tutorial led by our tutor Jen. We were also set homework every week which really challenged us. Though this was a bit overwhelming at first it really helped us complete our final writing task.
Our assignment was submitted last month and marked using university grading. Therefore we were incredibly proud to find out that we had all passed. On Thursday 5th July we all attended Newcastle University for our graduation ceremony. Congratulations to Foyez Ali, William Beattie, Niamh Brown, Niamh Goodacre, Dominic Marriott, Aaryn McDonald-Brown, Lucas Rowell, Lewis Heenan, Imari Logue, Luke Skeats, Katelyn Cummings and Emily Kinsey for all their hard work.
