Year 12

Year 12 Higher Level Geography - Tourism in Extreme Environments

Year 12 Higher Level geographers have been investigating how human activity can impact extreme environments. They have specifically looked at the how tourism can be utilised in hot and cold areas. To do this they focused on the town of Chamonix and the city of Dubai. To make the process more exciting the group were asked to create a presentation that would convince their teacher to buy a holiday home in one of the areas. The presentations that were created were interesting and they provoked a lively discussion. Well done Dubai.

Year 12 - BTEC Business and Art

The BTEC Business and Art students have been working on redesigning the IB lounge for the DP and CP students. The Art students completed a mural to improve the design and the feel of the lounge. The Business students researched the benefits of a student lounge, proposed a design with furniture and a room layout, and presented their ideas to school administrators. We hope to have a relaxing and beautiful space in the next year.

Year 12 - BTEC - Careers Fair

The BTEC business students organised a careers evening for the year 11 students to enable them to challenge their thinking about possible careers.  The theme of the evening was ‘Discovering the Unknown’ so that students could learn from professionals with jobs they may never have heard of or considered.  The BTEC students invited 21 speakers onto campus and worked with Cuisine Lab (a charity working with refugee chefs) to provide catering. The feedback from both students and guests has been very positive with one student saying, “the most important thing I learned is that passion, curiosity and hard work are key ingredients to happiness in work,’ and another, ‘there are so many jobs that I have never heard of!’  We thank all the volunteer speakers, student helpers, service technique and the year 12 BTEC students for supporting this successful and informative event.

Year 12 and 13 - BTEC Trip to the UN

Recently the BTEC business students in years 12 and 13 visited the UN for a GEL (Global Entrepreneurial Leadership) summit in conjunction with the UK charity, Wild Hearts.  The summit looked at the challenges business faces in considering the United Nations 17 sustainable development goals. They also considered what entrepreneurship is and how tomorrow's entrepreneurs have to also be aware of and driven by these goals.

The students were fortunate enough to listen to speakers such as Princess Zahra Aga Khan from the Aga Khan Development Network, Antonio Hautle, Executive Director of the Global Compact Network Switzerland and Cheryl Kiser, Executive Director of the US Babson Social Innovation Lab, Ian Walker, Senior Director of Global Community Impact at Johnson and Johnson as well as Stephan Hirschi the Director of Sustainability & Climate Change, Pwc and Wadia Ait Hamza, Global Shapers, World Economic Forum.

The day was an informative and enriching and underpinned much of the work done in the business course.

Year 12 - The Nexus

The DP geographers have been exploring the idea of ‘the nexus’. The approach outlines that when we discuss the issues of water, food and energy they can not be looked at individually. Any solution to solve a problem is complex and it often involves numerous factors. To help the students gain an understanding of the complexity of nexus thinking the students were given a series of hexagons which had a number of statements on them. The group were divided into teams to sort the hexagons into categories that made sense to them and were then asked to tesselate them. Any hexagon that touched another had to relate to it. Below are photos of the students at work.

Year 12 - Alumni Evening

On Tuesday 12th June the year 12s and a few year 11s took part in a Q&A Alumni evening.  The purpose of the event was to give them an insight into what to expect at university and how to choose both a course and a university.  The students were eager to learn from first hand experiences and asked lots of questions.

The Nations Alumni represented a good mix of countries and courses, which meant that for every question there was a rich variety of responses and opinions.  One of our alumni had gone to the USA, but found his choice was not for him and our students benefited from seeing his pragmatism about his choices and lessons learned.  Another alumni studying law in London had done a gap year and despite not getting into Yale, Stanford or Oxford was very happy with London and her course.  A third from Leiden University, the Hague studying liberal arts was very open about the emotional side of going to university and how lonely it can be.  All alumni offered lots of ideas as to how to overcome this.  One alumni studying film in London fascinated our film students whilst another had already completed her bachelors, an MA and a PGCE (at 3 different universities) so could offer a more reflective perspective.  Finally a student studying  sustainable development at Edinburgh was able to  contrast her peers experiences of England to the Scottish university system and was able to calm fears about maths studies!

For 45 minutes the students were engaged and at times we had up to 10 students with hands up to ask questions.  Once the official event was over around 25 students remained.  We continued the panel style Q&A  until refreshments were served and we moved to an informal format. 

We'd like to thank the year 12 PTA for supporting this event and our 6 alumni for giving their time for a very productive and informative evening.