Imagine Creativity
Our innovative approach to STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) places real emphasis on harnessing our students’ creative talents and blending them with skills in critical thinking, creative problem solving, entrepreneurship and leadership.
We challenge our students to apply these skills to real-world problems facing industry and society today. With our explicit focus on creativity, we give girls and boys everything they need to take an idea and make it fly.
Most recently, our approach has helped the School win the 2020 Award for Excellence in STEAM Education as part of the Education and Training Awards.
Combining creativity with STEM
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There has been a significant emphasis on Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM) in recent years as vital skills for our young people in a fast changing world. We couldn’t agree more but believe that these analytical skills are most effective when combined with creativity to enable creative problem-solving, innovation and entrepreneurial approaches. This is why our STEAM programme places the Arts at the heart of our approach.
Student-led projects
All students get the opportunity to participate in a STEAM project each year in the STEAM Innovation Hub, with an opportunity to pursue and extend individual or team projects through our Club STEAM co-curricular activity. Many projects are currently focused around sustainability, with students entering submissions for a British Science Association CREST Award.
Students are taught Design Thinking, applying their skills to design and build projects as well as research projects.
STEAM in action
Sophie’s studying A-Levels in Art, Maths and Computer Science, with a view to doing Creative Computing at university. She chose to complete an EPQ in Computational Advertising.
“I’m developing software for someone to create and market a product all on one site” she says. She also secured a work experience placement with Unilever. “I got to experience real work, from meetings to product research to writing copy for Mumsnet. It has confirmed what I want to do.”
Top academic progress for STEAM
Our Sixth Form students achieve outstanding academic progress across the STEAM disciplines.
- Adding 2.3 of a grade in Further Maths
- Adding 1.2 of a grade in Physics
- Adding 1.1 of a grade in DT
- Adding 1 of a grade in Chemistry
- Adding 0.7 of a grade in Computer Science
- Adding 0.6 of a grade in Biology
iSTEM+
We’re a leading school in the UK-wide iSTEM+ network, acting as a STEAM centre of excellence to bring local schools and business together.
National Centre for Computing Education
We’re the only Lead School in Berkshire with a Master Teacher in Computer Science, working as a regional hub for best practise in this important subject.
