2016/17 | 01634 828115
www.rochester-college.org
THE RIC TIMES A co-educational day & boarding school | Year 7 to sixth form | Non-selective & high performing | ISC accredited
Non-selective 6th form No option blocks Average class size 8
Boarding at Rochester Weekly and full
Retake GCSE while starting A levels A fresh start
Rethink your subjects Intensive, short GCSEs and A levels
Switching schools Year 13 transfers triumph
Successfully Individual Consistently Academic Intensive A levels The routes through A levels our students take are as diverse as their destinations. The key ingredient to this success is the ability to take intenisve one-year courses. One of the top performers, Ella HalpernMatthews, switched to RIC after the first year of the IB Diploma at a local grammar school. Finding A levels a better route, Ella completed three subjects intensively in only one year, making her grades of AAA in History, English Literature and Film Studies even more impressive. Ella has a place to study History at SOAS, University of London, the world’s leading institution for the study of Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Switching schools after Year 12 Another high flying one-year A level success is Henry Barten from Cranbrook School. Henry joined the College with CDDD at AS, switched all of his subjects and took three one-year A levels in Psychology, Sociology and Film Studies. His grades of AAB have won him a Psychology place at King’s College, London. 2016 has been possibly the most diverse for student destinations: Natural Sciences at Trinity College, Cambridge; Astrophysics at Edinburgh; Computing at Imperial to a place at the Istituto Marangoni (the top international fashion school); Medicine at Oxford; Electronic Music and DJ Practice at UCLan;Veterinary Science at Liverpool; Law at Exeter; Aerospace Engineering at Bristol; Japanese at Sheffield. It’s not just university final destinations that are being celebrated. One student won a place on a fiercely competitive Ministry of
Defence apprenticeship scheme and another is off to join the elite 82nd Airborne division of the US Army. Rethink and restart Akin Wright has a first choice place at Manchester for Drama and English, but what he is celebrating even more is that he enjoyed the last two years of his education:“School for me used to be a mixture of waking up early in the morning and trying to think of an excuse for why I should skip it. It used to be spending 8 hours in a building studying a bunch of things I really didn’t care about, and could not remember by the end of the day, then going home and avoiding as much work as I could. I spent 5 years at a traditional private school that tried too hard to be Eton and never succeeded, and then a year at a state school which was even worse. Believe me when I say making the switch to RIC genuinely changed my life. If you’re looking for somewhere where they will not only treat you like you are in university, a place where you can choose your own subjects which aren’t confined to blocks so you can create the A level course and experience you want and be surrounded by a positive, hard working but fun vibe, then go to Rochester Independent College.” Akin had done a year of AS before joining RIC and, while many students opt to transfer directly into Year 13, Akin decided to rip up the past and make a completely new start. Enrolling on a conventional two-year A level programme certainly paid off for him.
Musical Gates and Flying Pigs The Good Schools Guide describes the College as a “place for individuals” and quotes one mother discussing our lack of school gates competitiveness:‘That playground talk, everyone wanting their child to be in the top set, you don’t have that’.Well, we have taken school gates competitiveness to a whole
new level and we think we have aced it. Created by Henry Dagg, Faversham-based sound sculptor and engineer, the RIC Musical Gates form an amazing musical instrument.“It has a pitch span of six octaves, so most of the orchestral range, and each section has its own very distinctive sound quality,” said Henry,“It
Emma Macgregor and Lizzie Jones celebrate their 1st choice university places at Sheffield and Exeter
will require a group of players to co-operate, like hand-bell ringers, which will help develop skills every musician needs to be a good ensemble player.” We’d love anyone interested in this challenge to contact us. Quirkily adorned with six porcine sculptures, clover leaves, a mathematical equation known as Euler’s Relationship and a Middle English inscription, the gates are a landmark
piece of public art which has educational value, not only to RIC but to surrounding schools and the wider community. The Flying Pig has been the College’s motif since founders Brian Pain and Simon de Belder were told by cynical friends that pigs would fly if they set up their own College. They have been flying ever since.
“For the first time in two years I felt as though my dream of doing medicine was possible because I knew I was surrounded by people whose advice I trusted.” Natasha Alford, accepted to study Medicine at Bristol