Specialist Support & Villiers Park Courses Help Guide Honours Programme Students' Career Paths

Two Honours Programme students have been given the chance to explore their chosen future career paths at one of the UK’s most prestigious learning courses.

Villiers Park Educational Trust aims to ensure young people with a passion for study and learning reach their full academic potential, with an emphasis on helping those from less advantaged backgrounds gain places at leading universities and thrive once there.

With keen interests in careers in Law and Computer Science respectively, Ruby Keeler-Williams and Alex Parkinson gained places on the selective courses through the specialist support of The Sixth Form College’s Personal & Guidance Tutors, whose work within social mobility has already been praised.

First year Ruby, who joined the college from Woodchurch High School and studies Psychology and Science along with Law, is looking at becoming a lawyer and said that the five day Villiers Park course at the campus in Cambridge went a long way in helping her decide in which direction she’d like to go:

“I’ve known that I wanted to do Law since I started at The Sixth Form College, but the course has reaffirmed that for me, especially that I want to concentrate on criminal law or human rights law – somewhere that I feel I can make an impact. We had some sessions on commercial law but I feel quite strongly that the other two areas could be my vocation.”

As one of the selected 20 students on the Law course, making her in the top 5% of performers in the country according to Villiers Park staff, Ruby, who is part of the First XI Football Team at the college, explained that the long days of study and research in Cambridge weren’t as much of a shock to the system as they could have been: “It was great to be learning in what felt very much like a higher education environment. It was very intensive, listening and learning from others around you as well as directly from the speakers and teachers, but the way that we’re taught at the college meant that I was prepared for that and it wasn’t such a big step.”

Fellow first year, Alex Parkinson, is targeting a career in the Computer Science industry, and studies the subject at The Sixth Form College along with Maths, Further Maths and Physics.

Alex, formerly of Pensby High School, said: “We were all encouraged to learn something new and interesting and, because we all went for one subject, computing science, everyone had the same interests and hobbies. For the most part we made web pages out of html and a chosen language like JavaScript or Python.”

Alex continued: “It gave me a real idea of what you would do in a profession involving Computing. It was a great experience because it helped develop attributes that I’m not too skilled in at the moment, and from that it's really sparked an interest in me to do more programming.  It also really helped me to get used to meeting new, interesting people and get socialising.”