Eton Connect Summer School 2021
The Eton Connect Summer School is a free five-day residential Summer School for local Year 10 students hosted at Eton College. Working alongside EtonX, the summer school runs the Skills for Success course to further enrich and develop resilience and social skills.
Run as two cohorts over two consecutive weeks, local and partnership schools were asked to nominate four students each to attend the summer school. Focusing particularly on students who might have had a challenging time over the past 12 months with the successive lockdowns, and who might profit from the independence and aspiration implicit in spending a week in a boarding school.
In 2021, only the first Eton Connect Summer School was able to run due to Covid.
Aims
The Eton Connect Summer School hopes to bring students together from different school to learn and grow together through their residential stay at Eton. Being taken out of both their home and school environments with new people to connect with we aim to support young people in building confidence, independence and problem-solving skills.
The EtonX Skills for Success course aims to help students to understand themselves better, to discover their personal strengths and values, and to develop resilience to help them to keep going through challenging times. At the start of the course, students will identify their future goals and throughout the course they will meet and practise skills such as growth mindset, resilience, creativity, assertiveness, active listening, and critical thinking and learn how to apply them to their everyday lives.
Background
Set up to offer an entertaining and valuable week for Year 10 students after the continued disruption of COVID-19 on young people’s education and social experience, we created the summer school to complement support given by schools in promoting social and emotional wellbeing.
Resources
The Eton Connect Summer School ran from Eton College. Two boarding houses were used as well as classrooms, sports facilities, dining hall, museums and grounds.
The summer school staff delivered the Skills for Success course content which was created by EtonX. Other Eton staff supported the summer school through giving talks and tours.
For the second course, which unfortunately had to be cancelled due to Covid, we sent access codes to four EtonX courses Applying for University, Writing Skills, Entrepreneurship and Critical Thinking. Although online courses cannot replace the experience of a residential, we hope the students still gain useful insight and skills from these.
Impact
Through the student feedback survey, the impact of the course focused on the experience of meeting other young people, making friends and having fun together. The Skills for Success course was well pitched and students fed back that they enjoyed and were positivity challenged by the content. They were able to see how these new skills could be applied in real life situations.
Frequency
Annual