Thursday 9th February saw the Graduation of our inaugural cohort of Brilliant Club Scholars.

With students suitably dressed in cap and gown we celebrated with parents and carers, ate cake and listened to some beautiful piano music from Year 10 student Noah P.

Twenty-seven students from Years 7, 8 & 9 have worked extremely hard since the project commenced in October.

This group of more able students visited Christ’s College in Cambridge in November, had face to face tutorials from a world class PHD tutor over the winter and wrote a dissertation (approx. 1500 words each) to answer the conundrum;   ‘How to live a long and happy life’

Comparing different countries, they independently and effectively researched the differing approaches to Medicine, Psychology, Sociology, Politics, Environment, Employment, Economics and the impact of the local Geography.

They have developed their resilience, up-skilled their critical thinking, verbal communication and essay writing, they have additionally developed their time management, their ability to work with new people, their understanding of plagiarism and copyright, how to create a bibliography and acknowledge the sources used in their research.

Our students each produced a short university level piece of work and have been awarded grades accordingly.

With 11 graded 2:2, 5 graded 2:1 and 11 First Class grades, GBHS students astounded the Brilliant Club charity with the high quality of their work. Such standards of excellence are rare and we are truly proud of every one of them.

Quotes from The Brilliant Club

“I’ve been doing this for a number of years and this is the best cohort of students with the best marks that I have ever seen”    Alex (PHD Tutor)

“The marks were triple checked by The Brilliant Club, so they are bona-fide correct”  Adam Joseph-Kerr  (Scholar’s Programme administrator)

Quotes from students

“I really enjoyed it and it’s made me want to work harder and aim for a more ambitious choice in higher education. Now it feels like a realistic goal and I’m hopeful I can challenge myself to do better.”

“The programme has helped me to understand how to be an independent learner and our tutor has given great assistance and feedback to my work.”

“I initially believed that it was only some extra tuition; but now, …… it was significantly more than ‘just tuition."

“Our knowledge of life and work at university has been broadened, and I'm sure many of us would also agree that the trip to Cambridge was a fun day out.”

“The one lesson that really stood out to me was one of the most cliché sayings, ’to get to the place you want to be at, you have to work for it,’ and I can personally tell you that it is not light work, and I hope everyone else can take away this lesson too.”