The College is delighted to invite local schools to participate in our annual ‘Beyond GCSE’ Academic Enrichment Series.
The lectures, aimed at academic scholars currently in Year 10 or 11, will be delivered online in a webinar Q+A format, by specialist teaching staff from Brighton College. They are designed to challenge, stimulate and engage pupils who are eager to push themselves academically, and focus on topics that pupils will not cover during their GCSEs or that are only offered at A-level.
All lectures take place from 4–5pm. There is no cost to any pupil or school wishing to take part. The full programme of lectures is below:
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Tuesday 6 October |
Non-Computability: What computers really can’t do – Matthew Scott (Head of Computing)
This lecture will give you an overview of the types of problem that a computer can solve and the limitations to this. It will consider the role of Alan Turing in the development of the universal Turing machine and how this helped us define problems as being tractable, intractable and non-computable. There will be a brief synopsis of how quantum computers may lead to a reclassification of what computers can do! |
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Tuesday 13 October |
Black British History – Joe Skeaping (Head of Critical Thinking and Teacher of History)
‘We are here because you were there’ (Stuart Hall)
The teaching of British history has tended to concentrate on a familiar narrative of great military victories, kings and queens, famous explorers, industrial growth and imperial expansion. However, none of this is very helpful in enabling us to understand Britain’s modern multi-racial society, or the issues of racial injustice highlighted by the recent BLM protests. The histories of slavery and empire are often presented simply as mistakes that Britain has now corrected, rather than processes that continue to shape the country today. In this session we will take a look at how British history was shaped by Black people for centuries before the slave trade, how African resistance to the slave trade led to abolition in 1807, and how the attitudes that underpinned slavery and empire endured in Britain even after the empire itself declined, shaping the experiences of migrants who have travelled to the UK in search of a better life. |
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Tuesday 27 October |
Catalonia: a culture within a culture – Richard Alvers (Head of Spanish and PSHE)
They’re a quirky bunch, these Catalans! Do they want to be a part of Spain or not? This talk will cover some of the linguistic and cultural differences between Catalonia and the rest of Spain and will look at the arguments for independence. |
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Tuesday 3 November |
Circadian clocks – Barney Davies (Head of Biology)
Every organism on the planet, from bacteria to brown bears, possesses an internal body clock to help it coordinate its activity with the external environment. In this talk we will explore what comprises this circadian (from the Latin words ‘circa’ and ‘dies’, meaning ‘about’ and ‘a day’) clock in plants and humans, how it works and what happens when it goes wrong. In a society that has been enabled by the internet to be effectively open all hours, we will also discuss how knowledge of our circadian biology can help us maximise our performance during the day and sleep better at night. |
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Tuesday 10 November |
Politics and Shakespeare – Tom Poole (Teacher of English)
This lecture will explore the politics of some of Shakespeare’s famous plays, and draw parallels to issues we are still debating today. |
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Tuesday 17 November |
Mad or Bad; gender and mental health within the Criminal Justice System - Georgina Clarke (Teacher of Psychology)
Much research has been conducted examining the perceptions of gender and mental health within the criminal justice system. Understanding the lay public’s perceptions has implications for the outcomes of criminal cases overseen by juries. From this research we know that those with a mental health disorder are seen to be more dangerous (Minster & Knowles, 2006), however less responsible (Skeem & Golding, 2001) and female offenders have been found to be treated more leniently than males (Daly, 1987). This research supports the ‘Mad or Bad’ theory which sees female offenders as acting in accordance with a mental health disorder (‘mad’) and male offenders as rational and responsible for their actions (‘bad’) (Peter, 2006). |
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Tuesday 24 November |
Neurodiversity and Executive Functions – Olga Ruszczak (Head of Academic Support)
Neurodiversity describes the human brain. There is infinite variation in how each of our brains work.
That work can be defined by the phrase Executive Functions – the ways our brains process information is responsible for our thoughts, emotion and action. These are the cognitive processes which allow us to filter distractions, prioritise tasks, set goals, and control impulses. All of your learning is controlled by this – in this session I want to help you see the power of your brain. |
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Tuesday 1 December |
The importance of playing games – Nick Maloney (Teacher of Economics)
Economics is about how people coordinate their needs and wants in order to experience as high a quality of life as possible. However, in order to make sense of this, people are assumed to behave predictably. Is this a fair assumption to make? Economists make models to help explain economic events and outcomes. In this lecture we’ll look at a few of those models and assess the ability of economists to predict behaviour |
All participants will receive a certificate of completion if they attend over 80% of the series, and pupils who have contributed and show high levels of engagement will be eligible for prizes.
If you would like your pupils to attend, please complete this form and return it to rhughes@brightoncollege.net. The lead teacher and pupils listed in the form will then be added to the Webinar register, and we will then send out further details and webinar links. Please do also get in touch with Miss Hughes if you have any questions at all.
