Year 8 had a recent opportunity to visit the famous Oxford University and spend some time there with the students. This picture above, was taken on the grounds of Balliol College which we visited. When we arrived there, they showed us the plan for the day through a presentation. We were always given the opportunity to ask questions about university entrance and what to expect at university.  After the presentation we were placed in groups and given a question to have a debate on. These were no ordinary questions. They were chosen specially to confuse us as there were so many different views on what was a correct answer. ‘Can money buy happiness?’ was one of our questions. We then had a vote on which group could come up with one of these kinds of questions to debate on. Within a couple of minutes, we were lined up to go to lunch. Our lunch was fantastic. It consisted of dessert and lunch.

Next, we were introduced to one of the students named Jamie; he showed us around and we saw his room where he stayed. We also found out that he got into Oxford with 11 A* in his GCSEs and 6 A* in his A -levels. We were shown to our base where we had a couple of math quizzes. They were very interesting indeed. Teachers decided that we could present these to our math classes on our first day back to check if our class could figure it out.

Last but not least we then gathered our stuff and started to head back towards our coach. It was a really amazing experience and a great opportunity for all of us! In roughly 2 hours we were at school so we reached around 4:15.

I think this was a very inspiring trip as we now know that if we try our best then we shall succeed and of course by looking at Jamie’s results we understood that it takes your full potential to get into the university that everyone can achieve if they put their everything into it. The quizzes were challenging but if you tried hard then you would’ve got it.

By Kaksha and Krisha – Year 8 Maths students