News from the WCLA

Dear colleagues,

Welcome to our fourth newsletter of this academic year.

As usual, Wellington College Learning Alliance has been busy. Under the umbrella of the Student Alliance we began recruiting for our third series of enterprise days, called Wellington Future Founders. Run by Head of Business at Wellington College Simon Roundell and alcohol-free drinks entrepreneur Amanda Thomson, this first ran in 2023 and saw eight students being taught how to make a £20 seed fund grow. This year we are again offering it to WCSA schools and Simon has now chosen eight students to join the project. It will run from this month until January 2026 and we will wait with bated breath to see what the new bunch of would-be entrepreneurs decide to do with their money! Thanks to all of you who nominated students to take part; we had a record 35 applicants.

This term we also ran an online session for prospective Oxbridge applicants in Year 10, 11 and 12, which gave out general information about the application system and was attended by 265 students from 23 schools, as well as an Oxbridge online super-curricular workshop for Year 12s, attended by 201 students from 20 schools.

The Wellington College University Fair for Year 12s also attracted 150 students from 8 schools within the partnership and there is another Oxbridge session lined up for this term aimed at parents of Year 10/11//12 students.

DATE FOR YOUR DIARIES
The 15th Festival of Education takes place this July. Do join us for two days of inspiring talks and discussions as well as a chance to network with people from all spheres of the education world.

In March we will host our second Law Applicants Prep day. This focuses on the process of applying to study law at University and the LNAT entrance test. There are also two panel sessions to answer any questions from the students, one with current law students and the second with a variety of legal professionals.

At the beginning of April we are running two of our big annual events; a Year 9 STEM Day and a Year 9 Humanities Day. These are both fully subscribed but do email lallen@wellingtoncollege.org.uk if you'd like to go on to a waiting list.

Later in the month we will run our A Level economics revision day for Year 13s. This course is run jointly for Wellington College students and WCSA students and focuses on the A level Economics syllabus, exploring techniques for revision and answering exam questions.

We will also run four more of this year’s 15 Outdoor Education Days between now and Easter with visits from Winston Churchill, Kings Academy Binfield, Yateley and Ranelagh. Fingers crossed for some sunny days.

We were also delighted to welcome our new cohort of Year 9 Wheeler students on February 11 for an induction day when they got to know each other by playing human bingo, going on a treasure hunt around the Wellington College grounds and spending time on the low ropes working on their team-building skills (see picture, below).

Our Year 10 Wheelers also came in for a Study Day on January 21 when they had a careers session, an English lesson and maths lesson.

The Year 12s came in on February 4 for a “soft skills” day that saw them discussing who inspires them in life and how to put their skills and interests to good use. The day featured a talk from Nikki Coleman of the Prospect Trust careers services team and a series of sessions from Talk About, an organisation that provides bespoke training with a focus on soft skills. Talk About mentor Venandah Madanhi (pictured below with Fatima and Emma) and James Wiley encouraged the group to consider various styles of communication, as well as asking them to think about the skills that make people successful.

As part of the Teaching Alliance we hosted a Subject Specific Support Group in RS. Today we have 16 members of school staff here at Wellington taking part in the first day of our Mental Health First Aid (Youth) course. We were also able to rehome 16 3D printers that were no longer needed by the college, with Waingels, Garth Hill, Tomlinscote and Bulmershe snapping them up.

The Bridge, which is a new centre for Teaching, Learning and Research based at Wellington College, and serving schools around the world, also has many events coming up this term, including a coaching course, a conference on recruitment and retention and one on the use of mobile phones in schools. See The Bridge for more information on all these.

See the What's Coming section below for dates. You can also find them on our website at wcla.wellingtoncollege.org.uk, which is full of information about our programmes, dates of forthcoming events and stories about past events.

Sue and Lindsay have been visiting schools in the partnership and enjoyed meeting staff at Emmbrook and Bulmershe in January and Kings International this month. It is always great to see what schools are doing and their different approach to issues common to us all. Wishing you, your staff and pupils all the best for the rest of this term and I look forward to seeing you all soon.

Best wishes,
Paul

Student Alliance

Core programme

March 6: Future Founders first meeting of new group
March 26: Law applicants day
April 1: STEM Day
April 2: Humanities Day

Wheeler Programme

March 12: Study Day Year 11
April 23: Study Day Year 12
April 24: Study Day Year 10
May 13 : Second Induction Day Year 9
May 15: Parents meeting, 6pm

Teaching Alliance

Inter-school Support

Feb 28: Mental Health First Aid for Youth part 1
Mar 7: Mental Health First Aid for Youth part 2
Mar 12: PLG meeting, 3.30pm online

Email: wcla@wellingtoncollege.org.uk
Twitter: @WCLA_UK
Website: wcla.wellingtoncollege.org.uk

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