An Academic School: Learning At AHS

Aylesbury’s Grammar School for Girls

As a fully selective girls’ grammar school, we turn academic potential into achievement and success. In addition to A Level qualifications, we will ensure that you learn the skills and develop as a person so that you emerge from AHS as a mature, engaging young adult; ready for the challenges and opportunities ahead.

We provide you with the chance to follow your dreams and to make your own futures. Our Sixth Form is very much the transition point between GCSEs and the world of Higher Education (HE), Apprenticeships and employment.

A Level Study

It is about choosing the right courses for you. Most of our Sixth Form students choose to study three A Levels in their two years of Sixth Form. Some students, with strong GCSE results, qualify to study four A Levels. We will support this ambition and advise you along the way to ensure you are comfortable with your workload.

Our students choose A Levels from a wide range of subjects and wherever possible, we will run a subject if there is sufficient demand. Most students also choose an Extension Subject in Year 12 to complement their examined academic subjects.

We have increased the amount of learning time in Year 12, and students now have timetables that are balanced between teacher-led time in the classroom - typically around 15 to 20 lessons a week - and time for private study, whole-school and co-curricular activities.

Private Study, Independent Study and Homework

Our students are going into a world that is changing fast. Whilst they may enter careers that don’t yet exist, using technology yet to be developed, core skills will always endure. Our students learn how to be genuinely independent and self-motivated learners. They work hard in the classroom, and appreciate that A Level success relies as much on what they do outside their lessons as it does inside.

Our status as a ‘Google Reference School’, following our ‘exemplary’ work with 1:1 devices and BYOD is testament to our commitment to leading modern teaching and learning initiatives.

There are three areas that you can choose to study in during a school day:

• you can browse books and periodicals in our fantastic and well-resourced library

• working quietly in our Sixth Form Study Centre

• in the Main Dining Hall, where you can work collaboratively over coffee and a pastry, throughout the day.

Whatever your learning style, we have a way of supporting it.