PPEP

Our Personal and Pastoral Education Programme is a crucial part of the ULMaS experience, designed to ensure that all students have the opportunity to develop the confidence, knowledge and skills they need to be fulfilled and successful in their life and chosen career.

Our PPEP programme ensures that all the work we do to help you develop as a well rounded young person is well planned and coherent. Just as the A-Level and AMP courses we teach are intertwined and mutually supportive, so is our pastoral curriculum: enrichment activities give you opportunities to further develop the interpersonal skills and self confidence that we are teaching you about in careers sessions and AMP projects.

PPEP includes

Monday morning Tutor Group sessions

School starts at 10.15 on a Monday morning because the staff have their weekly training meeting every Monday morning. You will start the week by catching up with your pastoral tutor and your tutor group. There will be

news updates about opportunities at school and nationally,
the chance to choose your Friday enrichment activities,
questionnaires to complete to help the school improve its work,
opportunities to develop presentations and assemblies that you will deliver with other members of your group (these are really important for students who have found it difficult to participate in public speaking activities previously: we gently develop your confidence until you are able to stand up and communicate with confidence and clarity),
the weekly school quiz!

Fortnightly one to one meetings with your pastoral tutor

Every two weeks you will meet with your form tutor for a ten minute catch up. The topics for the conversation are planned over the two years you are with us so that you we can

help you settle in to school,
ensure you have the support you need,
check that you are coping with class work and homework,
help you to develop effective study habits,
review your mock exam results,
guide you through the UCAS applications process
help you with Degree Apprenticeship applications, if you choose to do that
address anything that is causing you worry or concern

Weekly Personal Development lessons

These lessons offer a huge variety of different experiences and are adapted every year in response to students' feedback and their needs and interests. In recent lessons we have visited the International Slavery Museum, had an induction visit to the University Library, learned about the history of local street names, developed our SPEAKing skills (our school system for delivering effective presentations), learned about sleep and effective habit development, learned about mental wellbeing, visiting the Oceanography department at the university, learned debating skills, as well as discussing sensitive issues such as addiction, radicalisation, consent and abuse. We cover sex and relationships education in these lessons and also the UCAS and Student Finance Processes, but we also cover unexpected things like how to use a drill and maintain a car.

Educational visits

Although you might think that our subjects (maths, physics and computer science) are quite classroom based, we love to get out to visit places with our students.

Our favourite destinations are:

Cambridge University, where we work with Magdelene College and St John's College to help our students to understand more about applying to highly competitive courses.

Other universities like York University, Imperial College, London and King's College London, so that our students can think about the different kinds of universities and courses they could consider.

Research and industrial history destinations like CERN, BESSY (the Helmholtz Centre), ESRF and Ironbridge which bring science, technology, engineering and maths to life for our students.

One of the main reasons we love to take students on overnight visits is because they enjoy it so much, make great friends and develop so much confidence and ambition in such a short time: we think that educational visits like this are transformational for young people and we provide financial support when needed to ensure that everyone can take part.

Clubs and Enrichment Activities

Find out more about these on our Enrichment Page - there's so much going on!

Careers Support

Meetings with our STEM specialist careers adviser

Career focused projects, visits and school speakers

Training in essential careers skills such as public speaking, networking and online collaboration

Find out more about our careers programme and careers in STEM here