We are committed to preparing you for higher education or further study at a higher level in a workplace. Study at these levels involves planning an independent learning schedule and organising your time to meet given deadlines. You will be asked to thoroughly research aspects of your subject and prepare presentations and synopses as part of your programme of study.

With this in mind, you will be set independent study tasks in most of your subjects each half term. This will be in addition to regular homework assessments. Students studying Btec qualifications will have a rigorous amount of independent work to complete outside of lesson time. It is expected that you will have, on average, a total of three hours of study or independent research outside of lessons each day.

To help you manage your workload we have provided you with excellent facilities for private study. We have a purpose built Study Area with ICT provision which is supervised by a member of staff. You will be expected to work in silence. 

Depending on the subjects you will be studying, there will be a number of periods when you have no scheduled lesson. We will be allocating approximately two thirds of these as Private Study Lessons. These will take place in the supervised Study Area and a register will be taken. You may choose how to spend the remaining ‘free periods’. You can use the Common Room, Canteen Area or any vacant room in the Sixth Form Block to sit and chat with friends or work in groups together.

Formal monitoring of student progress takes place three times a year. At the end of each period of monitoring, students who are significantly below target will have to increase their number of study periods and their use of the Study Area will be carefully monitored by the supervising teacher.

If you are identified as a student with a Target Grade of A or A*, your subject teacher will provide you with some ‘Stretch and Challenge’ material. Again, this is something which you will be expected to work on during your study periods.