Oxbridge Comes to BSix
BSix has just welcomed its Visiting Fellow. Dr Peter Claus is a Senior Research Fellow in History at Pembroke College Oxford University.
Dr Claus is working at BSix for several days a week. He will be giving lectures, running seminars and giving one-to-one advice both about university admissions and about how to boost academic achievement.
Dr Claus will also be delivering the Pem-Brooke programme, a unique collaboration between BSix and Pembroke College Oxford. Students are interviewed for a place on the programme. They attend a year-long programme of visits, seminars, Easter Study Skills sessions and a week-long summer school at Pembroke in which our students experience the academic and social life of an Oxbridge undergraduate.
Dr Claus explains his motivation thus: "I think the situation with social mobility and the possibility of the most talented of our young people to get to the very top and to do their best is urgent, especially in the current economic crisis. I have a view of the academic or intellectual in society as having a public duty. Finally, my personal experience is important. I left school with very few qualifications and was given a second chance as a mature student. This makes me want to come back and present the very best to our young people in the East End. Our young people have just as much, if not more, potential as anywhere else."
Looking ahead, Dr Claus reflects on the aims and potential successes of this unique arrangement: "I want this project to be sustainable and academic interventions from university tutors in post-16 education to become more regular. We will begin the process of reaching out and engaging with highly talented young people, wherever they are from. I want to make sure that what we are doing here at BSix becomes normal rather than, as it is at the moment, exceptional."
Dr Claus' appointment is part of a wider Raising Aspirations programme which brings together BSix and top universities to prepare students for successful entry to, and then study at, the very best universities. As well as Oxford, BSix has partnership with City, York and Cambridge universities as well as Imperial College and Queen Mary of the University of London.
"I cannot tell you how thrilled we are with this project", says Ken Warman, the College's Principal. "Long-term, sustained partnerships between colleges and universities is the way to opening the doors of the very best universities to our young people. We are so pleased that BSix is leading the way."
For details of the Raising Aspirations programme, click here
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