News

Summer school for gifted young people starts at Durham University

(11 August 2005)

Bright young students from across the country will be coming to Durham University for a summer school (14-27 August) as part of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth to engage in two weeks of intense learning with some of the University’s leading academic staff.

The students are all aged between 11 and 16 and from the top 5% of their secondary school year groups. They will be residential students based at Durham’s Van Mildert College and the course will aim to stretch both their abilities and imaginations.

Durham is one of seven partner higher education institutions running summer schools in conjunction with NAGTY which is based at Warwick University. The 2005 NAGTY summer school at Durham University has 16 students from North East schools.

Two of the courses on offer at Durham’s summer school have been identified as examples of good practice by the Centre for Educational Development, Appraisal and Research (CEDAR). One of those is the course entitled “Argument Matters” which enables students to argue more effectively about hot issues such as love, racism, war and art, drawing on insights and techniques developed by philosophers. The other course identified is “Exploring Cultures to Discover Anthropology”.

Dr Andrew Davis from the School of Education at Durham University is running the “Argument Matters” course. He said: “Retaining and developing our passionate commitment to personal values and beliefs and at the same time engaging in constructive reasoning with others who may differ is crucial for our survival. We help our students to support each other in progressing at least a little way towards this ideal.”

During the summer school, each student specialises in a single subject and they are taught by leading academics and teachers. In addition to the formal teaching sessions students take part in external visits, practical challenges and debates. There is also time set aside for private study, sports and a range of social activities. The social programme provides students with activities which are not normally offered at school such as hip hop dancing, ultimate frisbee and graffiti art.

The students will also visit various places of interest in the region as part of their programme. Students specialising in maths will visit the York Maze near York (Thursday 18 August) to investigate the mathematics of maze design.

The history students will visit the Killhope Lead Mining Museum (Friday 19 August) with the physics students going into the Boulby Mine (Wednesday 24 August). The students focusing on psychology will make a trip to the Life Science Centre in Newcastle (Friday 26 August).

The anthropology students will visit exhibitions at the University’s Oriental Museum which is entirely devoted to art and archaeology from cultures throughout the Orient (Thursday 18 August). The students focusing on economics will be looking at Durham Cathedral as a business finance model (Wednesday 24 August) whereas the law students will be across the green in Durham Castle (Tuesday 23 August).

Nicola Northcott from Durham’s Undergraduate Admissions Office who is the NAGTY Summer School Director said: “We are really looking forward to welcoming this year’s group of 135 gifted and talented young people to Durham University. We feel the summer school offers a different way of studying and thinking not normally provided in a school environment which we hope will motivate them to become even higher achievers.”

For more information: www.nagty.co.uk