University Courses

At Geoffrey Field Junior School we are passionate about giving children opportunities beyond the curriculum and UNIVERSITY is a fantastic example of this.  Twice a year every pupil in the school gets the opportunity to enroll in a university course of their choosing from our prospectus of courses.  These courses are designed and run by all of our teaching staff, focusing on an area that the children will not typically be exposed to as part of day to day schooling.  Once they have enrolled in their chosen course, the children complete five session afternoon sessions delivered by their course leader over a term.

What makes university so special is the sheer range of course available for pupils to select from.  Previous university prospectuses have included course such as Sign Language, Crime Scene Investigation, First Aid, America Football, Journalism, Batik and Code Breaking – just to name a few.

University is also another wonderful opportunity for the children to work with pupils from other year groups as courses are open to all year groups.  Having a mixture of pupils from different year groups also empowers the upper juniors to demonstrate our core Geoffrey Field value of RESPONSIBILITY while supporting the younger members of their course.

We love our university afternoons; they give us an opportunity to choose what we want to learn from a long list of things that are sometimes very different from the things we normally do at school. As with actual university, our university afternoons hand over control of their own education to pupils. They get to choose a course designed and led by an expert. They study a prospectus, fill in an application form, wait with excitement to see if they have got their first choice and eventually have the sense of achievement of graduating.

“You have to let children experience the freedom to choose before they feel a real sense of ownership, and engagement in their education”