Bradford Children’s University graduates Class of 2022
More than 30 Bradford schoolchildren graduated from the Children’s University earlier this month, after completing various challenges.
The Children’s University is designed to widen access to higher education by introducing children to a broader range of learning activities. In order to ‘graduate’, children must complete at least 30 hours worth of scheduled activities, for example, by taking part in various sports and learning opportunities or by visiting museums.
Children from Killinghall Primary School travelled to the University of Bradford on Tuesday July 5 for their graduation ceremony, where they met academics and got to wear gowns and hats.
Pupils Tayeb Abid (pictured above) and Zunairah Mughal (pictured below) received gold and silver awards, respectively, with Tayeb (pictured) completing 488 hours of extracurricular activities.
The University’s membership of the Children’s University forms part of its Levelling Up work - this week, the university won its second Levelling Up award for its Progression Scheme, which uses ‘contextualised admissions’ to create reduced offers for some students who do not get the grades they need to enrol on courses.
Outreach and recruitment officer Andrew Gray said: “The Children’s University is all about getting young people interested in extracurricular activities, such as sport, science and visiting places like the National Science and Media Museum. All of this is then recorded in a ‘passport’.
“Ultimately, we are trying to build relationships with local schools, and to give children a feel for what university is like. When they come to the graduation event, they get to meet some of the academics, so it’s really useful in terms of giving them a broader understanding of what higher education is and also the confidence to know it’s something they can aim for in the future.”
While graduates were all required to achieve the minimum of 30 hours, various students achieved more than that, with one student racking up a staggering 488 hours.
More about the Children’s University
The Children’s University (CU) Trust is a national initiative, managed through a network of over 100 local CU centres. The overall ambition of the CU Trust is to raise aspirations of young people aged between 7-14 years, boost achievement and foster a love of learning.
The CU Scheme delivered by the University of Bradford is open to both primary and high schools in specific areas across the Bradford district, based on POLAR classification.
The participation of local areas (POLAR) classification, groups areas across the UK, based on the proportion of young people that go on to participate in higher education. The score looks at how likely young people are to participate in higher education across the UK and highlights how this varies across geographical areas.
POLAR classifies local areas into five groups - or quintiles - based on the proportion of 18 year olds who enter higher education aged 18 or 19 years old. Quintile one shows the lowest rate of participation. Quintile five shows the highest rate of participation.
To check if your school meets this criteria search based on your school postcode. If your school postcode has a POLAR4 young participation quintile score of 1 or 2, you will be eligible to join the University of Bradford CU scheme.
If you have any questions about eligibility please email: [email protected]