Schools, colleges and community
Pre-16
The outreach team at the University of Leicester deliver a range of events, activities and information sessions for secondary school (Key stages 3 - 4) students. These sessions can be delivered in school or virtually (live or recorded).
We also offer a range of subject insight days where students are able to visit us at the University of Leicester. We work with selected schools across the UK providing pre-16 outreach.
We have a dedicated member of the outreach team that can work with you to best support your students. If you’d like to get in touch to discuss support, book an activity, or have another query, please email schools@le.ac.uk.
Our core outreach offering
Our core Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) offering has been designed to meet the needs of young people and enable as many young people as possible to have an encounter with a higher education provider through their educational journey. This supports schools with meeting Gatsby Benchmark 7.
We have split our materials across the different year groups, which now make up our core IAG offering:
Year 7-8
IAG sessions
All of our IAG sessions are available to book as a 20-30 minute assembly for a whole year group or 1 hour workshop for a maximum of 30 students.
What is Higher Education?
Students will gain an introduction to higher education and explore some of the opportunities and experiences going to university presents, as well as begin to explore the key differences between school and university.
Student life talk
Hear from a current student at the University of Leicester about their experience of being a student, what they are studying, their favourite parts of university and the key skills they are developing.
Subject discovery sessions
All of our subject discovery sessions are available to book as 45-60 minutes workshops with a maximum of 30 students.
Engineering: Whatever floats your boat
Will your boat float or sink? Be destroyed or survive? Tasked with building a strong enough boat to survive the strength of 1KG, students will immerse themselves in creating their own boat from everyday household and craft materials. We’ll learn how decisions like these can be make or break for engineers.
English: “Some tea?” “Well which one?”
This interactive session will look at how words like ‘slay’, went from the world of dragons, into TikToks and fashion and is now becoming more and more popular with teenagers. We’ll uncover the evolution of words and how they developed into popular slang culture.
Law: The importance of evidence
Ever wondered about the phrase, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover?’ Why is it important that we have all the information to hand before making a decision? In this Law session, students will look at a real-life case piece by piece, making decisions after each new bit of evidence. Will their final decision be different than their initial thought or will their first reaction be the right one?
Medicine: Taking a patient history
Become a medical detective and learn how GPs can diagnose someone just by asking the right questions. In this interactive session, students will learn about the types of questions doctors ask to help them work out what is wrong with their patients.
Psychology: Tricks of the brain
Face the challenge to see if you have what it takes to overcome the illusions created by your own mind. In this interactive session, we’ll take a look at 3 different psychological experiments and how they are able to affect our brains. We’ll also uncover how they are able to do this and learn more about what psychology is.
Year 9
IAG sessions
All of our IAG sessions are available to book as a 20-30 minute assembly for a whole year group or 1 hour workshop for a maximum of 30 students.
What is Higher Education?
Students will gain an introduction to higher education and explore some of the opportunities and experiences going to university presents, as well as begin to explore the key differences between school and university.
GCSE options
Students will explore the different options available when selecting their GCSE choices, focusing on how certain courses at university require particular GCSEs with the aim of supporting students to make informed decisions.
Student life talk
Hear from a current student at the University of Leicester about their experience of being a student, what they are studying, their favourite parts of university and the key skills they are developing.
Subject discovery sessions
All of our subject discovery sessions are available to book as 45-60 minutes workshops with a maximum of 30 students.
Engineering: Whatever floats your boat
Will your boat float or sink? Be destroyed or survive? Tasked with building a strong enough boat to survive the strength of 1KG, students will immerse themselves in creating their own boat from everyday household and craft materials. We’ll learn how decisions like these can be make or break for engineers.
English: “Some tea?” “Well which one?”
This interactive session will look at how words like ‘slay’, went from the world of dragons, into TikToks and fashion and is now becoming more and more popular with teenagers. We’ll uncover the evolution of words and how they developed into popular slang culture.
Law: The importance of evidence
Ever wondered about the phrase, ‘Don’t judge a book by its cover?’ Why is it important that we have all the information to hand before making a decision? In this Law session, students will look at a real-life case piece by piece, making decisions after each new bit of evidence. Will their final decision be different than their initial thought or will their first reaction be the right one?
Medicine: Taking a patient history
Become a medical detective and learn how GPs can diagnose someone just by asking the right questions. In this interactive session, students will learn about the types of questions doctors ask to help them work out what is wrong with their patients.
Psychology: Tricks of the brain
Face the challenge to see if you have what it takes to overcome the illusions created by your own mind. In this interactive session, we’ll take a look at 3 different psychological experiments and how they are able to affect our brains. We’ll also uncover how they are able to do this and learn more about what psychology is.
Year 10 - 11
IAG sessions
All of our IAG sessions are available to book as a 20-30 minute assembly for a whole year group or 1 hour workshop for a maximum of 30 students.
Post-16 options
This session helps students explore the different options available to them for their Level 3 qualifications. We will look at some of the key differences in learning style and assessment, alongside how these choices can make a difference to the course options available to them at university.
The benefits of Higher Education
Students will explore what higher education is, the benefits of undertaking degree level education, as well as the key differences between school and university.
Student Finance
An introduction on all thing’s student finance; including what support is on offer, what repayments look like as well as other ways to financially support yourself as a student at university.
Student life talk
Hear from a current student at the University of Leicester about their experience of being a student, what they are studying, their favourite parts of university and the key skills they are developing.
Subject discovery sessions
All of our subject discovery sessions are available to book as 45-60 minutes workshops with a maximum of 30 students.
Law: Criminal age of responsibility
Crime and punishment explored - at what age should we be held responsible for our actions? Should it depend on the action itself, or should this be set regardless of the action? This session will explore all this and more.
Medicine and Healthcare: The community MDT
The front line of healthcare is more than doctors and nurses… there’s a whole multi-disciplinary team who must work together to help our communities. In this session, students will work together to work out who our case study patients need to be treated by in order to get better. We will also talk about the routes into some of these professions, including the training and salaries involved.
Due to planned building works to improve our campus, we are extremely limited with space. As such, we are unable to accommodate any campus visit requests during 2024/25. However, we are planning on running a number of subject insight days on selected dates to ensure students still have the opportunity to visit us.
2024 – 2025 pre-16 events
In addition to our core IAG offering, we host a number of additional opportunities for young people. Some are available for school bookings only whilst other events students can directly sign up.