Scholarship
Scholarship at St Paul’s
The skills required for success in NCEA scholarship examinations meld well the ethos at St Paul’s Collegiate School, of developing a broad skill set within our young people.
Success in the NCEA scholarship examinations represents the pinnacle of academic achievement for secondary school students in New Zealand. In addition to the substantial monetary awards available to successful candidates, the scholarship examinations provide the students with a rigorous assessment that compares well with any higher secondary school qualification available anywhere in the world.
St Paul’s has enjoyed a great deal of success in the NCEA scholarship examinations to date, being consistently the top school in the region and one of the top nationally with respect to scholarships gained per number of candidates.
To build on this success and to affirm its commitment to providing education of the highest quality, St Paul’s has developed a specialised scholarship programme for its students. It is a belief of the School that the pathway to success in NCEA Scholarship must begin in Year 9 and carry through until the sitting of examinations at the end of Year 13.
Achievement in the NCEA scholarship examinations typically means that the students are not only well prepared academically for further study, but that they are highly skilled critical thinkers, organisers, and communicators.
Below are details of the Scholarship programme currently in place at St Paul’s that is designed to help students achieve to their maximum academic potential.
Scholarship Subject Tuition
Students at St Paul’s are welcome to enter for scholarship in any subject that the School offers.
The heads of each department within the School offer subject-specific programmes of tuition designed to give their scholarship candidates the best chance of success. Most subjects offer tutorial sessions from Term 2 onwards that either run in the mornings prior to school, or at lunchtimes. These sessions are regarded as compulsory for students that are serious about scholarship at the end of the year.
Scholarship at Year 13
Upon entering Year 13, students will have a good idea of the subjects in which they will attempt the scholarship examinations.
Throughout the academic year, students receive specialised tuition for each of their chosen scholarship subjects in addition to group seminars designed to teach generic cross-curricular scholarship skills.
St Paul’s has also implemented a mentoring system designed to further help our top scholars through the demands of the Year 13 academic year.
Scholarship in the Junior School
Turning young academics into scholarship achievers begins as soon as they arrive at St Paul’s. The School has developed, and is continuing to develop, a range of programmes within the Junior School designed to nurture and promote academic excellence.
The Scholarship Group
At the beginning of each academic year, a group of around 30, mostly Year 13 with some exceptional Year 12 students, are selected to be a part of the Scholarship Group based on their previous year’s results and their potential as genuine scholarship candidates.
The group meets once a week for a generic skills seminar and once or twice a term a guest speaker is invited to address the scholarship group.
Speakers to date have included previous successful St Paul’s scholarship candidates, Professor Michael Waring, world renowned head of chemotherapy at Cambridge University and Colonel Eric Boe, NASA Pilot of the Endeavour Space Shuttle flight STS-126 to the Space Station.
Scholarship Mentoring
In addition to the wider scholarship group, the students are also placed into smaller mentor groups. These groups meet approximately once a week with a teacher mentor to discuss, in an informal setting, the many issues that face our top academic students.
The mentor is there to listen and offer advice in areas such as; time management, workload and commitment management, and study planning. The mentor is also there to assist the students in finding and applying for other scholarship funding available through a variety of sources.
In addition to the money earned from success in the scholarship examinations, each year a number of students are assisted by their mentors to secure further scholarships worth tens of thousands of dollars each. Some students have gained full study scholarships worth in excess of $100,000.
Generic Skills Sessions
St Paul’s have identified that deficiencies in certain generic skills can form significant barriers to success in scholarship examinations for even the very best academics. These skills include; essay writing, question interpretation, exam technique, and revision skills.
To address this, a number of teachers have contributed to a seminar programme designed to ensure that the students enter the end of year examinations armed with this skill set. These seminars are for the whole scholarship group and any other student planning on entering for scholarship examinations.
The programme is held Wednesday mornings prior to the start of school, and are regarded as compulsory learning for our academics.
St Paul’s Collegiate School is committed to giving its top academic students the best possible preparation required for NCEA scholarship, and in doing so, will continue to build on its reputation as one of the top scholarship schools in the country.