Welcome to the St John’s Inspire Programme Summer Schools 2021!
On this page you will find information about how to access and navigate the Summer School material and how you can share your work with us.
You can also find more information about St John’s, including an interactive tour of the College – so scroll down for more!
How to navigate the Summer School
Your first port of call for all Summer School activities will be the Timetable page for your strand of the Summer School – there are three strands so make sure you have the correct Timetable for your strand! You will know which strand you are on from the email that we sent you with the link to the Virtual Summer School. If you received an email from your teacher rather than directly from us and have been attending Inspire After School Clubs in Ealing or Harrow, then you are on the Pre-GCSE programme.
All Summer School content will go live on these pages, with new material added every day at 10am between Monday 2nd August and Friday 6th August – just click on the links from the Timetable to access all activity pages, videos, skills sessions, and academic talks. There will be a suggested order for each of the sessions, however you are free to work through the material in any order you like!
All activities will be available until Friday 23rd September 2021. This means you can re-watch any sessions you loved, catch up on things you missed, and fit the Summer School around your holidays or other commitments.
What you can expect
This year, the theme of our Year 12 Summer School is Careers. You will be introduced to a featured career each day, where you will learn what people in that career do, ‘meet’ someone working in this field (via video interviews) and have a chance to try out activities related to this topic yourself. In case any career takes your particular interest, there will be links to further resources, which will let you know about the kinds of jobs in this area, and routes you might take to work here.
You will also have the chance to browse our Career Inspiration page, where alumni (past students) of St John’s, along with alumni of Oxford and other universities have spoken to us about their degrees and their careers after university. You might be surprised by some of the unusual directions people have taken after their studies, and how some alumni who studied very different subjects are now working in similar areas!
In addition, we have a wide range of skills development sessions to help you begin thinking about your future ambitions, such as Mastering Student Motivation and Goal Mapping (Positively MAD), How to Pick the University Course for You (Causeway Education), and an introduction to our Careers Service and how they help students gain experience in a variety of workplaces.
Share your work
We would love to see any examples of work that you do during your Inspire Summer School. This can be a photo of something you have made, a picture you have drawn, some written work (e.g. the start of a speech, or the answer to a question we asked), or some thoughts you have about what you have learnt!
To submit your work or photos, look for the ‘Share with us’ section at the bottom of each activity page, which will take you to a form. You can also get to the form from here.
All pupils who share their work with us by August 31 2021 will receive a certificate of participation in the summer school and will be entered into a prize draw! A £10 Amazon voucher will be awarded to each winning entry, selected randomly from all submissions. If you give us permission, your entry may be shared on Inspire Digital and our social media alongside your first name.
Poster Challenge
You will also have the opportunity to submit a more substantial assignment at the end of the Year 12 Summer School: an academic poster examining Personal Identity. This will challenge you to consider what contributes to our idea of ‘us’, and what are the key elements that make you ‘you’? Instructions for this assignment will be provided on Monday 2 August. You can work on your poster around your other activities, or set aside some time after you have completed the other activities.
All pupils who submit a poster by August 31 2021 will have their poster judged by an Oxford expert. Winning entries will receive a £20 Amazon voucher, and their entries will be featured on Inspire Digital.
You can submit your completed poster here (please note, this is a separate competition from the ‘Share with us’ Prize Draw).
Tour of St John’s
Although we’re sadly not able to welcome visitors to the College in-person this summer, you can explore St John’s virtually via this interactive tour, courtesy of our very own mascot, Agnes the Lamb (find out more about her here)!
Learn more about life at St John’s, visit our beautiful quads and gardens, explore the library, and view some student accommodation. You’ll also encounter some fun facts along the way – find out why the college library still holds a cannon ball from 1644, which part of the college is haunted by the ghost of a barmaid, and which king allegedly fell asleep and tumbled into the fireplace in the College hall!
Click here to view a full screen version of this interactive image.
Learn more about the College
You can learn more about St John’s College and its buildings by clicking here, and also learn more about the long history of the college, dating back more than 400 years!
Meet the Team
The Inspire Programme Summer School is brought to you by the dedicated Access & Outreach Team at St John’s College. Click here to find out more about us!