Enrichment, 6th Form
The Elephant Group - Supporting students into top universities
We are delighted to announce that from July 2021, Montsaye Academy Sixth Form will be partnering with the Elephant Group. The Elephant Access programme provides a range of activities, trips and experiences to support students’ aspirations, attainment and applications to top universities, and will help to ensure that our most academically capable students access top third universities at the end of their time with us.
We will be working with a regional collaboration of head teachers in the East Midlands, and with partners from top universities including Oxford, Cambridge, Sheffield, York, Exeter, Newcastle, St George’s Medical School, SOAS and King’s College London.
The programme kicks off this summer, with a number of our year 12 students having signed up for a virtual Summer School. The summer school will allow students to gain guidance on university admissions and applications, receive careers information direct from employers and young professionals, and meet current undergraduates. Students will also participate in a team academic project centred on tackling real world problems.
We are really excited to be able to offer this provision. Look out for future news stories on what our Elephant Access participants have been up to!
For more information visit www.theelephantgroup.org
Twitter: @TheElephantGrou
Barcelona 2020
Please see below an article, written by Lauren, about our March 2020 Art, Design and Photography trip to Barcelona
Having the opportunity to go to Barcelona as part of my Photography class was the best trip I have been on. It was my first time flying and going abroad, but luckily my nerves were calmed because the atmosphere created by the staff and my friends made it so much easier for me. The flight alone was brilliant, especially flying over the French Alps.
The weather was lovely, and it was sunny every day, which meant that it was ice cream weather! I managed to find an ice cream shop on Las Ramblas with my friends where I tried an Oreo and vanilla flavour. During the trip, my group tried to find local cafes, so we were taking full advantage of the trip and being in a different country. However, I did go to McDonalds once just to see how different it was compared to the ones in Britain!
I have many favourite memories from that trip. We ate breakfast on the hostel roof terrace in the mornings because it was already warm, so it was nice eating toast with my sunglasses on with my friends. As well as this, the terrace became the main place to go at night, where we played Uno and games; it was a great place that brought everyone together and created a lovely atmosphere. Another one that comes to mind is on the Thursday, we went to see La Sagrada Familia. Even though we could not go inside, just seeing it up close and personal was amazing; it was so intricate and finely detailed and honestly quite memorising.
As well as this, going to Park Guell was amazing and pretty. The park is well known for is mosaics, and these mosaics were scattered around the park along with Gaudi’s famous Gecko. As I am doing abstract for my major project in photography, having the opportunity to have a close-up look at these mosaics and patterns was really helpful, and they were interesting to look at and to photograph.
Going to Casa Mila was also one of my favourite parts of the trip. Seeing all the sculptures on the roof by Gaudi showed so much detail and it showed how talented Gaudi was, plus the view was amazing. I could even see La Sagrada Familia from the roof! I managed to take many photos from the roof of all the alleyways and different streets.
Another memorable moment was when we went to the Olympic Sports Museum. My friend captured the perfect moment on camera, when a swimming pool came up on the screen with me standing in front of it. This was an important part of the trip for me because swimming is such a huge part of my life, so to see the original swimming equipment that was used was truly memorable.
I have come back from this trip with many great memories and much closer friendships. It was truly the best experience I've had.
It truly was an amazing trip. Please click on the gallery below to see some of the amazing scenes captured by Lauren and Lewis.