LIFE BEYOND…

With a total commitment to preparing its students for the future, St Mary’s College offers a range of extended opportunities that encourage independent thought, research and creativity. Photography: Kirsten Platt

At St Mary’s College all Year 12 and 13 students enjoy a journey of opportunity that helps them prepare for exams, interviews, university application and their life beyond. Each year a specific higher education fair and an additional employment fair are held in the college.

SMC’s Student Guidance and teaching staff help with entrance tests, mock interviews and work experience, while the Extended Project Qualification promotes research and deeper learning. The High Achievers Programme encourages students to venture beyond conventional study programmes. This year has seen a high number of successful offers for students applying for competitive subjects such as Medicine, Dentistry and Veterinary Science.

Head boy James Hughes Gooding explains: “We get such a lot of help here at St Mary’s College. I want to study Medicine, so I have been able to get work experience at a GP’s practice and at the Royal Blackburn Hospital. Two very different settings so it was a really good experience. James adds: “When applying to do Medicine at university, it is very competitive, so it pays to get all the experience you can, and we are so lucky to have such a strong collaboration with the Royal Blackburn Hospital.”

St Mary’s College encourages all students to have interests beyond their core subjects to enable them to develop as a whole. Joseph Kitching, also in Year 13, is studying Biology, Chemistry and Maths and hopes to study Natural Sciences at a leading university. He is a key member of St Mary’s College Science Plus group – an enrichment programme open to all students.

Joseph has been able to take part in several challenges including the Cambridge Chemistry Challenge and the RSC Olympiad which has helped to develop his subject knowledge outside of the curriculum. During his time at St Mary’s he also joined the college’s Physics trip to CERN where students learnt about antimatter, visited a ‘Data Farm’ and met with lecturers who explained the methods employed to confirm the existence of particles such as the Higgs Boson.

“We were taken down into the bowels of the Large Hadron Collider and were able to see all the equipment. It was totally fascinating,” says Joseph, who is a volunteer with the Lancashire Wildlife Trust and hopes to eventually work in genetics or marine biology.

Students are also encouraged to attend university master classes and summer schools to give them a taste of what it will be like to study a specific subject. Year 12 student Olivia Bourne, who is studying four A level subjects, Biology, Chemistry, French and Maths, is also taking St Mary’s Extended Project Qualification, for which she is researching gene therapy and Alzheimer’s Disease. She recently returned from Oxford where she took part in a Science residential course. Olivia, who has embarked on work experience at Wythenshawe Hospital and the Royal Blackburn, explains: “The residential course in Oxford was a really informative experience as we had mini-lectures and tutorials. It really enabled us to see what it was like to study in that environment.”

St Mary’s College places great emphasis on supporting and guiding students, personally and academically, to ensure that they achieve their full potential.

St Mary’s College
Shear Brow, Blackburn BB1 8DX
01254 580464
www.stmarysblackburn.ac.uk

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