Last week, Shiplake pupils received their EPQ results, and were certainly not disappointed.
September 2018 saw the introduction of a bespoke Personal Understanding, Learning Skills and Enrichment (PULSE) programme for our Year 12 students. The first part of PULSE involves a weekly visiting lecture on a variety of topics from business to health, sport to politics. We invited staff, parents and outside speakers to come in to talk and this proved a resounding success with the talks by the British Memory Champion James Patterson, Hypnotist Martin S Taylor and a talk on buying and selling businesses from Andrew Clarfield from Merdian Equity, proving to be the most popular with students.
The academic side of the programme was working on an Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), which is a research-based qualification. This provides students with the opportunity to develop skills such as independence, time management and research as well as receiving UCAS points to aid university applications. Around 90% of Year 12 undertook an EPQ. The requirement is to decide on a topic, plan how to research the topic, execute the research and evaluate the process throughout. The outcome of this process is usually a 5,000 word essay, but this year submissions included cookbooks, dance performances, posters and even a drone mounted volcano sensor! Once the students had completed their projects, they were then required to present what they had done. Some students chose to do this in the Thinking Space during a lunchtime to students and staff who were invited to attend.
This week, 79 of our Year 13s received the results of their EPQ and we had some fantastic results. The key figures are: A* = 10%, A*-A = 30%, A*- B = 52%, A*- C = 79%.
The feedback from the moderation was also very positive exemplified by the comment:
"The candidates from the centre are congratulated on their efforts. They clearly prepared extremely well for this demanding qualification and proved just how effectively it can develop individuals in pursuit of autonomous learning. Their work shows a real sense of purpose and a worthwhile endeavour."
A massive well done to all students who finished and a big thank you to all of the supervisors who so expertly guided them through the process.
