The Brilliant Club

A scholars programme, the aim of Brilliant Club is to provide support to students who harbor ambitions of attending university and, throughout this academic year, pupils from Year 7 and Year 8 have thoroughly benefitted from the initiative.

It all started in March with a trip to the University of Birmingham – a top-20 UK establishment – to sample a little taster of student life. The pupils enjoyed a campus tour and got to see some of the university’s superb facilities.

Then, the students enjoyed attending workshops with Brandon, their assigned PhD tutor for their Brilliant Club project. He spoke eloquently and insightfully about the Windrush Generation and the subsequent scandal. This topic was to become the girls’ primary area of focus for their project.

The hard work then began. The pupils were required to submit a final ‘university-like’ assignment, taking on board all the advice, guidance and information passed onto them by Brandon.

Throughout the process, they remain motivated and determined to achieve the best grades possible. And that is certainly what they did, with 70% of Sir Jonathan North Students achieving a first in their assignment, thus making them one of the strong cohorts of the 2022/23 academic year.

As a reward for all of the girls’ hard work, they visited Emmanuel College at the University of Cambridge at the start of July for a special graduation ceremony.

They had a wonderful time walking around such an iconic educational institution; they asked questions about university life and enjoyed a campus tour before receiving their well-deserved graduation certificates.

Well done to all involved.