After Brockwood

The Life After Brockwood team provides dedicated one-to-one support and advice to students as they apply to university or for apprenticeships, art college or prepare to travel, volunteer or work around the world. Brockwood students are given real responsibility and agency in their own learning. Together with their teachers, they cultivate critical thinking skills, creativity and a genuine motivation, which allows them to flourish in life, professionally and personally. Brockwood students end up in a wide range of interesting roles across the world, having been given the opportunity and encouragement to find out what really moves them; they are consistently offered places at a full range of national and international universities, winning scholarships and bursaries for their work. Motivated, empathic and responsible, our students have the necessary qualities to meet life fully, with care and curiosity.

At Brockwood, students are responsible for their own learning. The school provides a wide range of classes, opportunities and resources; teachers are there to help students through careful support, challenge and attention. However, students at Brockwood must learn to take initiative, prioritise their learning objectives, maintain focus, rigour and attention, and strive for real excellence. The kind of excellence the school advocates is devoid from any sense of competition and self-aggrandisement. This quality of independent learning fostered in our students enables them to thrive academically, if they decide to pursue that path. Apart from academic learning, the school is also a vibrant community of international students and staff. This helps students get emotionally very well prepared for their lives after Brockwood, becoming confident and comfortable with their own feelings, thoughts and explorations. The school’s emphasis on right thinking enables them to question, understand and put in the right place the various influences and challenges which they will face when they leave Brockwood. Our students also become emotionally resilient and naturally affectionate and caring, which makes it much easier for them to understand and relate to others when they meet, communicate or work with them.

Brockwood students cultivate an independence that comes from being given real agency in their own learning. Being treated as equals in the learning process means support for cultivating these skills can be targeted before leaving school. The strength of the community at Brockwood, developed through living and working together in a small school, means that students become effective listeners and cultivate a tolerance and maturity that will serve them throughout life. Our multicultural selection of students and regular inquiry into what separates us and causes division and conflict, cultivates a real tolerance of views and opinions other than our own.

A number of our students in their time here discover that going directly into higher education is not the right step to take immediately after leaving. Brockwood is a place where this choice can be made as a positive affirmation of our students’ talents that challenges the narrow view of success being confined to academic attainment. Some choose to travel, making the most of the fact that the friends they made at Brockwood have their homes all over the world; for others, the world of employment and financial independence calls to them. In all cases, their time here allows students to find something that really interests them. All our students are encouraged to discover their passion while at Brockwood.

Many of our students are interested in accessing higher education after they leave Brockwood. In the UK, the standard path to get into universities is the completion of A level qualifications in at least three subjects. For some students, A Levels are a great choice to explore their talents and discover excellence in life and learning. At Brockwood, we offer a wide variety of subjects that can be studied at A Level, covering a substantial range of sciences, arts, and humanities subjects. Furthermore, our curriculum allows for flexibility with some other subjects that are not formally covered but which students might wish to study. Rather than insisting on a single route to higher education, we facilitate both the choice and the responsibility for students to create their own timetables and course selections. With advice and support, Brockwood students engage in a dynamic and meaningful process of choosing which path to follow. At Brockwood, we offer a range of programmes alongside A Levels, from unique Brockwood courses and independent projects — all of which can support an application to higher education in combination with, or instead of, A Levels.

Universities are waking up to the fact that a huge range of applicants will have three good A Levels but that these qualifications alone give very little indication of students’ deeper resilience, motivation or passions. So-called ‘standard’ applications (three A Levels, for example) are now used alongside a more personalised approach, either through progression agreements, presentations of portfolios, or through close working relationships that the Life After Brockwood team have with institutions and our network of alumni. Our small size and student advising programme mean that we know our students holistically, and can both advise them and connect them with institutions that will be a great fit. Again and again, we hear how valuable it was for our students to be allowed to find their own way with support and care. This cultivates an appreciation for the importance of, and love for, lifelong learning: an essential quality in the modern world.

Brockwood has a dedicated Life After Brockwood team which can provide advice and practical support to students as they prepare to leave the school. From personal introductions to an exciting range of institutions and experts, to writing transcripts and references, students can arrange one-to-one meetings each week of the school year and discuss their progress or explore their options and motivations. We also arrange and facilitate a wide variety of visits to universities, open days, higher education fairs and other events as needed. In addition, student advisers have access to a customised programme of preparing students for their transition beyond school, and students get plenty of inspiration for their future options from their daily interactions with other students and staff members who come from a wide range of countries and professional backgrounds.