We offer many areas of STEM that stretch beyond the curriculum, from regular clubs to national competitions and year group challenges.
Café Seminars
Students from Year 10 to 13 gather weekly for a lunchtime seminar where guest speakers, students and staff present and discuss a current STEM topic in academic research or industry.
STEM Leadership Qualification
Students in Year 9 to 12 can now take this Ofqual-regulated award at Level 2. They develop their leadership skills but also their technical ability and project management skills through a combination of taught theory and practical experience when planning and running activities for their peers in one of our numerous clubs or they can create their own club.
STEM days
During Enrichment and Science week, Infants and Juniors in the Prep School get to spend time where STEM takes over their timetable with a series of practical challenges, design puzzles, mind-blowing demonstrations, and fabulous virtual reality workshops.
Year Challenges
In the Spring term, our Year 7 pupils design, build and race their foam rocket cars on our very own racetrack.
Year 8 take on the Engineer Your Future challenge where teams work out the best way to make a model car’s charge last and learn about capacitors and sustainable development in the process. Our Year 9 are lucky enough to spend a whole day working on chocolate! From melting points to ethical production, and blind testing, all STEM subjects – plus a few tasty treats – are covered
F1 in Schools
Engineering in Motion hosts an annual international competition where teams are challenged to raise funds, set up a brand, design a car using CAD software, get it manufactured, and race it. Our pupils impress judges every year with their creativity but also their resilience and St Joseph’s has been a London South-East Champion and attended the Nationals on several occasions.
Cybercenturion
St Joseph’s has very successfully entered the CyberCenturion challenge, an international competition run by the Air Force Association that challenges teams (year 8 and above) to complete real-life cyber security tasks.
Awards
We are an Affiliated Arkwright School which allows us to enter Year 11 students through to the prestigious Arkwright Engineering Scholarship scheme every year.
CREST Awards are a nationally recognised certification from the British Science Association. Each year, Infants, Juniors, and Lower Seniors complete CREST Superstars and Discovery awards. Year 9 can take their Chocolate Day challenge forward to complete a CREST Silver award in Year
10. All F1 in Schools participants can validate a bronze, silver or gold award depending on their category of entry. Gold Awards carry UCAS points.
Pupils in Year 7 to 13 enter the UK Mathematical Trust challenges and the British Physics, Chemistry, and Informatics Olympiads, with many gaining bronze, silver, and gold awards.
St Joseph’s holds bronze and silver awards for the Wildlife challenge of the Royal Society for Bird Protection with activities completed in the Prep School; we take part every year in the Big Garden Birdwatch.
Trips and Conferences
There are numerous trips and events organised throughout the year in STEM. Science and Maths pupils attend Science Live and Maths Alive events throughout their studies of GCSE and A Level. There is a trip to CERN in Geneva and a Scuba diving induction run for pupils in the Sixth Form.
STEM classes attend a series of highly exciting days out, from extracting their DNA at high-tech Bayerlab to exploring Space with Catapult Satellites Applications and visiting the headquarters of the British national sailing team INEOS.
Partnerships
As part of our active STEM programme, we seek out partnerships to enhance our pupils STEM learning and experience. Currently, we are in partnership with Brazilian Schools on STEM Learning and Climate Change, the Royal Berkshire Hospital on Pain Management, The British Society for Lifestyle Medicine on Health & Movement and the University of York as a Pioneer School in the air monitoring SAMHE – Schools’ Air quality Monitoring for Health and Education project.
