Beyond the Classroom

Student receiving the Jack Petchey AwardWhile many students may apply for the same course or position, it’s your unique skills and experiences that make you stand out from the crowd when you apply. We offer students a wide range of opportunities to enhance their employability including volunteering, mentoring, work experience, interview skills and Student Leadership. 

We are particularly proud of our Bloomberg Robotics and Medical Enhanced programmes which offer tailored support for students wishing to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, maths and medical science.

Daily seminar time is used to reflect on individual goals and achievement, as well as discussions on PSHCE (Personal, Social, Health and Citizens Education), topical issues and careers. 

Keep up to date on Instagram @petchey6thform

Award winning careers advice

Our dedicated Careers Advisor is also based out of the Sixth Form and is available for 121 guidance and support with Personal Statements, UCAS applications and work experience for Year 12 students.

Read more about all the exciting and innovative opportunities our students benefit from below:

Bloomberg Robotics

Bloomberg Robotics gives students the opportunity to develop their enterprise skills, building and programming a robot in a team. The student team is divided into a fundraising team to generate enough money to make the robot and pay for travel to the arena in the New York, a media team to promote the robot, engineers to design and build the robot, as well as a team of programmers to develop the code to make the robot move. The 2019 team did better than ever this year competing with "The Beast" and had an amazing time.


You can see all of their photos on Instagram @petcheyacademy_robotics

Career Ready

CR Logo   blue&red

Our Career Ready mentoring programme is a proven, high-impact, no-cost way of ensuring that your young people have additional support in making informed decisions about their future education and career.

Career Ready specialises in supporting young people who lack the opportunities, networks, and confidence to reach their potential, providing them with the support they need to kickstart a rewarding and successful future. 

How it works
Our mentoring programme is a series of monthly meetings, each one building on the last, between a Career Ready student and a volunteer from the world of work.

Taking place in the mentor’s workplace or at the academy, each meeting lasts an hour and focuses on a different aspect of the student’s career and education journey.


Over the course of the programme, students, with their mentors, reflect on their progress mapped against our Skills for Career Success learning outcomes. Including:

Communications & Networking
Organisational Skills
Managing Myself
Problem Solving & Analysis

All Career Ready mentors are DBS-checked and advised on safe-guarding principles and codes of conduct prior to being matched with a young person.

Find out what our students think about career ready here

Read more about Career Ready here.

Medical Enhanced

Our Medical Enhanced programme is especially designed for students wishing to pursue a career in medicine, research, healthcare and related areas.
The programme includes expert mentoring, work experience in surgeries and hospitals,
partnerships with leading universities and healthcare providers. Weekly seminars
from GPs and clinicians which provide invaluable insight in to careers in the fields
of medicine and research.

We also have close links to major teaching hospitals such as the University of Westminster and UCL, and provide tailored mentoring to get future medics through those all important BMAT and UKCAT interviews. Links with top research universities provide students with university taster days and access to summer schools.

Envision

Envision empowers young people to create positive change, so that they can build the sort of society we all want to live in, by taking part in, creating and organising activities to impact positively on their community. Students are taught to recognise their power to make a real difference through the practical experience of doing so. And while they are doing it, they develop the competencies they need to go on creating positive change throughout adulthood

Envision Community Apprentice

Based loosely on TV's "The Apprentice", Community Apprentice gives young people a platform to tackle a community issue they care about. With weekly support from Envision, the students design and carry out their own social action project. The programme features several challenges to help young people develop the skills they’ll need for their projects to succeed. These skills, such as communication skills, will also contribute to their employability.

Student Leadership and Mentoring

The Sixth Form is an exciting opportunity for students to develop not only their academic skills at The Petchey Academy but also skills of leadership that are valuable in life and attractive to employers. All members of the Student Leadership Group are expected to act as role-models to other students in the academy, to attend Year Council meetings, to sit in family service with younger students and to plan and deliver assemblies with them. Roles include Student Principals and Chairs of the Well-Being, Teaching and Learning or Events & Communications Committees and Peer Mentors.

Our Student Council meet every semester to discuss aspects of academy life and report to their committees on progress and to develop their action plan. 

The mentors are also part of a weekly Enhanced programme called ‘Peer Mentoring’. They receive training and information from ‘Young Hackney’.

Young Enterprise

Our students on the Young Enterprise programme are working fortnightly with Citi Bank in Canary Wharf to help them set up and run a real business under the guidance of a Young Enterprise Business Adviser. It’s the ultimate business enterprise experience, with the option to gain a recognised qualification along the way.

Find out more at https://www.young-enterprise.org.uk/

Hackney University Extension Programme

Hackney University Extension Programme, in partnership with BSix Brooke House Sixth Form and The Hackney Learning Trust, enables our UG students to be a part of the Hackney University Extension Programme. This is run by BSix Brooke House Sixth Form College and is an outgrowth of the Pem-Brooke project, a collaboration with Pembroke College, Oxford that began in 2008. It provides short university-style courses, visits to universities around the country, and residential summer schools.

Duke of Edinburgh Award

The DofE programme is a real adventure from beginning to end, an opportunity learn valuable new skills, make new friends and try new things. A great opportunity to give back to the local comunity, and to practice leadership and team building skills that looks fantastic on a CV.  Participants  take part in a programme of activities in four sections - Volunteering, Physical, Skills and Expedition. 

Read more at www.dofe.org

National Citizen Service

The National Citizen Service helps build skills for work and life whilst taking on new challenges and meeting new friends. The programme involves a short time away from home, trying new things as well as taking part in a team project in the local community and much more. NCS is a government-funded initiative that supports community engagement, social action and social mixing among young people. We encourage all our Y12 students to sign up for the summer.

My Big Career

The academy has been working in partnership with My Big Career for over 4 years to provide free one-to-one career guidance to for our students and help to break down barriers to social mobility. Careers and advice is delivered by professionally qualified advisers volunteering from within the independent sector. These individuals are motivated by their shared passion for making career and educational opportunities available to all – regardless of background, affluence or connections.

The academy is extremely grateful to the founders and volunteers from My Big Career who have helped many of our students to secure places at their university of choice and much more.

Find out more about My Big Career here