Senior School (Years 11 - 13)
The goal of The Academy's senior school programme is for students to identify and work towards achieving their purpose.
From Year 11, students at the Academy progress through the Cambridge Upper Secondary and Cambridge Advanced curriculum which will lead them to achieving their A-Level qualification. Focused projects and experiences will be individually tailored to each student in the senior school to support them in their interests.
Cambridge International Education is the gold standard international benchmark for external assessment and ensures our students are internationally competitive and can meet the requirements for university entrance to the world's top-ranked universities.
The University of Cambridge has over 160 years' experience in delivering fair, valid, and reliable assessments to students worldwide, working with over 10,000 schools in 160 countries.
Students will generally select 4 or 5 subjects to focus on to achieve the requirement for their A-levels and NZ university entrance (UE). To learn more about Cambridge International UE requirements, visit Universities New Zealand's Other school-leavers qualifications page.
The senior school subjects will be:
As well as an internationally recognised secondary school qualification, students will have built an extensive portfolio of quality work (research articles, software, websites, web applications and hardware), complete with documentation which can be easily published and shared.
Our students will stand out and have a significant edge in competitive entry programmes such as medicine and engineering, and also for entry into prestigious overseas institutions where extra initiative in exploring subject areas and experiences is expected.
All students will be expected to take on at least one subject at NZQA Scholarship level and compete in a national academic competition: (Science Olympiads, Sargeson Prize, NZ Writers College Short Story Competition, Future Problem Solving, Engineering Science Competition, Tournament of Minds and others).
Programming will still be taught in the senior school to support the learning and entrenchment of important skills. Students may choose to study for the A-Level Computer Science qualification if they choose.
Through our curriculum, students will gain fluency in a wide range of industry programming languages (Python, C++, JavaScript) and they will have built a personal website and software repository to publish work.
Students may also elect to go beyond certain subject areas offered by Cambridge Advanced and into more specialised IT software and hardware certifications and qualifications. The school will tailor a programme accordingly for individual students.
