As well as the Apprentice style task, the mentees are also working towards building a yearbook for their cohort over the course of this week. This includes putting together individual profiles featuring their experiences, subject choices and impressions of the KAN UAP so far – showing off a wide array of talents and interests amongst our students!
Sunday afternoon provided the 2013 and 2014 cohorts with the opportunity to carry out some of their own revision, ably assisted and supported by our learning mentors. This allows the students to put in to practise many of the study skills or revision tips they hear in lessons or from our speakers, with the support of a mentor close at hand. Our mentors, and their experiences of school exams, the University application process and studying at top Universities are crucial to the success of our scheme, and they have each built up a fantastic rapport with their mentor group and others, providing a crucial support network for our students moving forward. We are particularly grateful for their work at this time of year, with University (finals for some) exams on the horizon, but at least it means they have an additional reason to set a good example by studying themselves in their free/break time!
A sport session is built in to the timetable for each day of the residential, important as it is to strike a balance between academic work and other activities, and to blow off some steam/get some exercise on a regular basis! This is organised and led by our mentors, and we are fortunate to have access to the amazing facilities in the Sennocke Centre here at Sevenoaks School. Football, Kwik Cricket, Squash and Circuits have been on the agenda so far – a varied provision and something for everyone, with Swimming and Basketball coming up this afternoon!
Our speaker last night, following his wife Anji Hunter who spoke last summer, was Adam Boulton, Editor at Large, former Political Editor and current presenter of the nightly news show at Sky News. Adam introduced the session by talking a little about his career, and his route to where he is now, before opening up the floor to a discussion about the impending EU Referendum, seeking to understand our students and their views. To their credit, our students responded superbly to this and what followed was a wide-ranging, interesting and contested debate, covering the key ideas relating to the referendum, punctuated by the immense knowledge of our guest. This continued something of a political theme this week, with a year 10 politics lesson and a politics discussion group for our year 11 and 12 – engagement and opinion levels are high, and Adam didn’t even get the chance to get on to talking about a certain Mr Trump!
Monday morning saw the year 10 and 12 cohorts set off to the University of Sussex for a specially arranged visit, while the year 11 have continued the revision focus of their week.
As a final point, today marks the tenth anniversary of the first ever tweet – follow our twitter account (@AandAFoundation) to see what we have to say!