Who wants to go to school in the summer? That sounds quite peculiar, doesn’t it? The type of summer schools I am talking about here used to run in many, almost all, UK Universities.

The initiative was started by an educational charity called the Sutton Trust. The purpose of summer schools was to attract young people just about to take A-level exams (roughly equivalent to Baccalaureat and such) to come to University for a week and sample Higher Education. During the week they were taught various subjects, just like undergraduate students, they engaged in sports activities, had a nice dinner and a summer schools disco.

Summer Schools were great fun and very popular but they also helped to attract young people from less privileged backgrounds to apply to Universities. Few years after the Sutton Trust had been running their summer schools the UK government launched their own summer schools programme under the Aimhigher initiative.

Summer Schools were simply amazing. People who attended had a great time and one could really see the confidence towards education growing in them. Bristol University, where I used work in this initiative, recently published a research on the impact of Summer Schools and proved their value in helping young people to Universities.