All students in Year 12 are encouraged to become a Subject Rep, which gives them valuable opportunities in leading activities and clubs as well as helping promote their subject to the younger years.

With this in mind, Mr Henderson ran a Reps Leadership Training morning for the year group just before half term.

The session kicked off with some fun icebreakers around the importance of verbal and non-verbal communication – how to get your key points across without actually speaking. The first part of the morning looked at Leadership Competencies – what are the essentials for being an inspiring leader? These included integrity, the ability to make courageous decisions, to inspire, to communicate transparently and be open to collaboration, to make change and innovate, to have a strategic perspective, to be open to develop and aim to improve on an ongoing basis. Put into subject rep groups, students then had to consider what every individual within their group was good at. They then had to give each other the positives face-to-face before the harder task of trying to tell each other the things they would individually like to work on. Mr Henderson was impressed with the level of support from students for each other, and also with their openness to listening to their peers on areas they could  develop and improve on, particularly when this took students out of their comfort zone.

The group then discussed the reasons behind taking on a leadership role. For some students, it was the chance to share the passion for a particular subject, while others decided to take on the role due to a positive experience earlier in school where they had been helped and supported by Sixth Form Subject Reps themselves. Reps have the opportunity to inspire the younger students, particularly when running a co-curricular club for a subject, so need to take responsibility for this. The students were also encouraged to really think about their subject niche – what activities could appeal to younger pupils, or even to students outside of NHEHS? The idea of leaving a legacy for future students was also important – for example we often look back now at students from the NHEHS archives from the twentieth century who had left the school a better place than when they joined through their ideas and innovations. Why not do the same now?

One important part of being a Subject Rep is helping to organise the Tuesday Sixth Form Lecture Programme. Practical tips and advice were given on how to come up with ideas for topics within subject reps groups, who to invite (including how to nurture links with the outside world – particularly on how to encourage speakers to come into school to give a talk and build a stronger relationship with them beyond the event itself), how to share those suggestions on the Jam Board and examples of email invitations to send out to potential speakers.

Beyond that there are even bigger opportunities to start planning  and get fully involved with larger events within students’ Subject Rep areas. These can range from medics conferences, events with our partner schools, subject-based challenges and competitions. Mr Henderson emphasised the importance of taking advantage of these opportunities as university interviewers will be keen to talk about such events – a student’s passion for a particular subject area where they have organised a large event can really help them stand out from the crowd, particularly for competitive courses. With this in mind, the Year 12s discussed in their subject groups any large events they had attended or been involved with over the past year, thinking about what they had enjoyed and what they would do differently to create a better event if they were running it. Then they were challenged to come up with a conference idea – to decide if the event would just be for their particular subject area, or if they could collaborate with other Reps. They had to imagine what the event day would look like – plan the outline of it, who their ideal guest(s) would be, who the audience would be, would the event be interactive or focused on speakers? The groups then had to write up their proposals to share with Mr Henderson within two weeks to put to Mr Shoults to see which bids were successful for next year.

We await Mr Shoults’ and Mr Henderson’s verdicts and look forward to some new exciting student-led events in 2022/23!