Bedford Academy nurtures the talents of every student and we recognise that some students have outstanding academic gifts. As part of our personalised learning curriculum, these students take part in the Super-Curricular Programme. This programme incorporates a wide range of activities and close monitoring of each student’s progress, achievement and participation.
With leading University places and degree apprenticeships being ever more competitive and an increasing importance placed upon super-curricular and even supra-curricular activities being prominent in student applications, the role of the Achievement Leader for the Super-Curricular Programme (Mr Marsham) is to source opportunities for students across Bedford Academy to add to their school experience. Primarily these opportunities are targetted at our more able students, as the places they often end up competing for are the most competitive of all. However, we ensure that a wide variety of them are offered to all students to give everyone a wide range of experiences, learning opportunities in younger years and leadership projects in later years.
For Sixth Form students, we aim to increase student responsibility with a diverse range of opportunities. This has seen the launch of three new programmes which comprise the Bedford Academy Pre-Teaching Programme.
Rising Stars is a project that began in 2016 and has continued year-on-year, bringing together Year 5 and Year 6 students from all the local Primary schools who are working at Greater Depth levels or are on the cusp of doing so and stretching them by presenting them with a half-termly challenge to complete alongside the Bedford Academy Year 7 and 8 students who also were Rising Stars when they were in Primary School. The intention is to challenge students, to take them outside their comfort zone and to extend their learning beyond the curriculum.