Category: News

Competition S6: winning entries

Thank you very much to everyone who submitted an entry to Competition S6, based on Dr Elizabeth Wonnacott’s lecture on ‘How do children learn language?’ Below you can read the winning entry, as selected by our team of markers. The challenge: Click here to read an article from Scientific American, on “How Linguists Would Talk to Extraterrestrials”. The…

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Competition S5: winning entries

Thank you very much to everyone who submitted an entry to Competition S5, based on Dr Ken Amor’s lecture on ‘Energy Transition to a Post Carbon World’. Below you can read the winning entry, as selected by our team of markers. The challenge: One proposal to reduce the variable electricity demand on the national grid is to make…

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Mathematical Modelling in Sport: Competition Results

Following the pair of Pre-GCSE Inspire talks delivered by Dr Tom Crawford on Mathematical Modelling in Sport – ‘How to take the perfect penalty’ and ‘Maths and the Marathon’ – we’re delighted to announce the winners of the two competitions following these classes! Both competitions were about how we can use Maths to help make…

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Class 4 Competition Results 2021

Well done to everyone who submitted an entry to Class 4 of the Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11 – the final class of this year’s programme. We received some excellent entries, and selecting winners proved tricky as always! You can click on the links below to read some of the fantastic prize-winning entries for…

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St John’s Access & Admissions: Spring Update

Even though schools were closed for much of last term, the work of the St John’ Access & Admissions team continued throughout, with a wide range of virtual activities for pupils from Years 10 to 12, including the launch of a number of new programmes and initiatives, allowing hundreds of pupils to benefit from our…

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‘The Magic Number’: Competition results

Following the Pre-GCSE Inspire talk delivered by Sammy Wright on ‘Why poems are like spells’, we’re delighted to announce the winners of the ‘Magic Number’ competition! This challenge was all about numbers in literature. If you look closely, there are certain numbers – such as two, three, seven, nine – which you will find recurring…

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Class 3 Competition Results 2021

Well done to everyone who submitted an entry to Class 3 of the Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11! We’ve been hard at work reading through all of the fantastic entries we’ve received, and are delighted to announce this month’s winners, runners-up and finalists. You can click on the links below to read some of…

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Maths Study Day

On Monday the 22nd of March, Professor Stuart White (Tutorial Fellow in Mathematics), along with the Access team, hosted a virtual Maths Study Day for high-achieving Year 12 students from non-selective state schools across the UK. 39 students logged on to hear our Access Officer Dr Maryanne Saunders present a talk on life at Oxford…

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St John’s Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11: Class 4

It’s now time for Class 4, the final class of our Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11: you’ll find the new class at the Year 11 webpage. For this final class of the year, we examine culture and history through the lens of evolution. We will begin by looking at how theories of evolution…

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Year 12 Inspire Programme Update

We are pleased to announce that the Year 12 Inspire programme had almost 100 applications this year! We will be letting applicants know very soon. Join the ongoing programme! Places are still available to join our ongoing programme. If you are interested in applying or finding out more, click here to view the Year 12…

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Class 2 Competition Results 2021

Well done to everyone who submitted an entry to Class 2 of the Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11! Once again, we received lots of very high-quality entries, and our markers had a tough time choosing the winners, runners up, and finalists – so congratulations to everybody who has won a prize! You can click…

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Year 10 Class 7: Competition results

We’re delighted to announce the winners of the latest set of Pre-GCSE Inspire competitions for the term! In Class 7, Adaptation and the Human Mind, we returned to evolution in science, looking again at some of the themes we first explored earlier in the course. We discussed what is meant by terms such as ‘genetics’,…

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Class 1 Competition Results 2021

Well done to everyone who submitted an entry to Class 1 of the Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11! The quality of entries we received was extremely high – so high in fact that we ended up awarding even more prizes than we had planned! You can click on the links below to read some…

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Year 10 Class 6: Competition results

We’re delighted to announce the winners of the latest set of Pre-GCSE Inspire competitions for 2021! In Class 6, Books, Literature & Leisure, we looked again at evolution through a cultural lens, exploring how books and novels have evolved through different formats, styles and practices that reflect the societies producing them. We then turned to…

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St John’s Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11: Class 2

It’s now time to move on to Class 2 of our Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11: you’ll find the new class at the Year 11 webpage. In the previous class, we learned about evolution as a driver of biological change. But other kinds of change function in quite similar ways, and today we…

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Year 10 Class 5: Competition results

We’re delighted to announce the winners of the first set of Pre-GCSE Inspire competitions for 2021! Class 5, Evolution and Volcanoes in review, was a little different from previous classes: we looked back at some of the topics we’ve covered over our last two themes stretching back to the summer school – ‘What is the…

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St John’s Inspire Programme for Years 10 & 11: Class 1

Dear Year 10 and 11 pupils, We hope you’ve had a wonderful holiday season and New Year’s! We’re excited to welcome you back to the Year 10 and 11 Inspire Programme with the first class materials. Today we are excited to release the first class materials for our Year 10 and 11 Inspire Programme. This…

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Inspire Year 10 and 11 Launch

St John’s College, as part of Oxford for South East, is excited to announce the Year 10 and 11 Inspire Programme for 2020-21!

Year 10 Class 1: Competition results

We’re delighted to announce the winners of this year’s first Pre-GCSE Inspire competitions! Click here to explore the fantastic entries we received…

Access and Admissions – summer update

Despite the suspension of all face-to-face access and admissions activity at St John’s in March 2020, the Access and Admissions team has continued to work hard throughout the lockdown, providing information, advice and dedicated digital resources to students and teachers across the UK.

Inspire Virtual Summer Schools in review

Following last week’s Virtual Summer Schools on the Inspire Programme, we are excited to announce the winners of last week’s Year 9 and Year 12 competitions!

Inspire Virtual Summer Schools

One of the highlights of our year at St John’s College is our Inspire Programme summer schools – and this year they are happening virtually! Click here to learn more.

Mentoring for Offer Holders

We’re pleased to announce the launch of a new mentoring scheme for our offer holders! Click here to find out more.

Virtual Open Days

We were delighted to host our first ever Virtual Open Days on 1-2 July 2020. Find out how you can still access the Virtual Open Day here!

Support for offer holders now online

Our tutors have put together some voluntary reading and other work so that offer holders have a chance to get a flavour of their subject before beginning their course.

Year 9 Class 3: Competition results

Congratulations to the winners of our third set of competitions on the Pre-GCSE Inspire Programme! Take a look at the winning entries here…

Year 9 Class 2: Competition results

Congratulations to the winners of our second set of competitions in the Pre-GCSE Inspire Programme! Click here to see their fantastic work.

St John’s Library opens virtually

The St John’s College Library team have put together a series of activities that allow you to engage with the St John’s collections in new and exciting ways…

Inspire team coordinates two pairs of Aspiration Days

As part of our Pre-GCSE Inspire Programme, currently running in 24 non-selective state schools in Ealing and Harrow, our Access & Outreach team have recently coordinated two full-day Aspiration Days per borough running on weekends, allowing pupils enrolled on the programme to get creative and explore new subjects in depth.