Pupil Research Projects on YouTube

At the centre of Forest’s distinct academic curriculum is the opportunity for pupils to undertake extended independent research projects. All pupils in Year 10 take the Higher Project Qualification (HPQ), a GCSE-graded qualification followed by the Extended Project Qualification (EPQ), completed in Year 12 and resulting in an equivalent A Level standard grade from the exam board. As a result, pupils extend and develop their skills in primary/secondary research and project management, the supervised research period culminating in them producing a written report, or, in the case of a more practical projects, an artefact or a production. The individual choice of topics is extraordinary and this year included pupil research on:

• Is the government of the United Kingdom doing enough to reduce the current threat of antimicrobial resistance to animal and human health?
• What was the most significant factor in the defeat of the Imperial German Navy by the Royal Navy in the period 1914-18?
• To what extent can further robotic influence on the home be deemed beneficial?
• To what extent was George HW Bush’s concept of a ‘New World Order’ successfully created in the 1990s?
• ‘To what extent can genetic engineering be justified in a Western culture?’

The projects will be moderated in September and students will find out their results after this.

Here are just two outstanding submissions that included videos of the construction of an artefact.

Joseph Pereira (Year 12) discusses the research undertaken for his EPQ – ‘Create an artefact to show how a plasma is confined in a Tokamak’. His project describes both the details of his research to physically construct the artefact itself but also looks into the science on how and why physicists build and perform experiments in devices called ‘tokamaks’.

Kieran Wakefield (Year 12) explores whether he can create a successful custom water-cooling loop in his desktop PC that would be superior to standard air-cooling.