Wycombe Abbey Higher Education Partnerships

We support applicants to highly selective university programmes at six comprehensive schools. These principally include heavily quantitative degrees programmes at Oxbridge and Imperial, as well as Medicine. This support takes the form of teacher-to-teacher support and mentoring, teacher-to-pupil coaching and mentoring, plus talks to relevant stakeholder groups (including parents) at partner schools.

Aims

The principal aim is to support applicants in partner schools to highly selective degree programmes. We also aim to help embed the relevant knowledge and expertise in those schools. We aim to benefit via the exchange of pedagogical best practice and through working with highly able pupils in other settings. 

Background

These relationships begin following the post-Covid folding of OxFizz, a not-for-profit organisation that provided Oxbridge application support for applicants from deprived backgrounds. As part of their closure, they asked us whether we would be interested in partnering with some of the schools they had worked with; we agreed to.

Resources

Staff time - we have four members of staff, each with a dedicated day per week for this work - as well as transport costs.

Impact

Applicants in all of our partner schools have recorded an increase in the number of applicants to highly selective programmes and also an increase in the number of successful applicants to highly selective programmes.

Pupil Involvement

Partner school pupils are 16-18. 

Frequency

Weekly contact, all year, both in-person and remotely, including online courses, talks, feedback and marking, mock interviews, as well as mentoring and coaching.