Month: July 2018

Christ the King was delighted to recently host a talk by Paul Morris who is the Managing Director for Europe, Middle East and Africa at Willis Towers Watson.

Paul talked to over one hundred of our students about growing up in California and the academic and personal challenges he faced when studying at Harvard University, receiving both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees with Honours in Applied Mathematics.

Paul’s consulting career has seen him work in California, New York and the UK and he spoke at length about how he and Willis Towers Watson promotes diversity and inclusion in their work place.

After the talk Paul said:  

“I thoroughly enjoyed the talk with the students.  It is inspiring to see thoughtful and inquisitive students who will be leading our communities, businesses and governments in the years to come.  Christ the King Sixth Form is doing a great job to prepare them for their futures.” 

We are delighted to announce that progressing Christ the King (CTK) students Ebony Haughton; Bossoma  Kouadiane and Emmanuel Idowu have each been awarded scholarships with Metric Capital Partners to support them in their studies at university.

So far, twelve £15,000 scholarships have been awarded to students at CTK by Metric Capital Partners. Metric Capital Partners are a capital fund management company and it is believed to be the first partnership of its kind between a college and a business. 

John Sinik, the firm’s managing partner, was introduced to CTK by Seni Fawehinmi, whom he had met through a scheme designed to partner up ethnic minority students with an adult mentor. When Seni enrolled at CTK, he introduced his mentor to our principal. From this meeting, the Metric Capital scholarships were born.

John was inspired to create the programme after encountering aspirational and high-performing students at the college who, despite wanting to go to university, simply couldn’t afford it. “It’s a crippling experience for many people to come out of university massively in debt,” he says. “Tuition fees are only part of the expense of going to university. There are living expenses that can be overwhelming for people, and ultimately drive their decision not to go.”

 Three Metric scholarships are awarded every year – one to a student attending each of the three colleges that make up Christ the King.

The students are selected according to academic performance and financial means-testing, before undergoing a formal interview. And the relationship doesn’t come to an end once the student heads off to university: they are required to update John each term about how well they are performing academically, and what they are spending the money on.

 Former collegiate principal Jane Overbury likens John’s approach to the mentoring offered in the TV show Dragons’ Den, explaining that the students receive personal advice and access to a large list of relevant contacts.

“John’s quite clear: it’s not [just] about the living expenses – its access to books and resources and materials that some of our students might struggle to have access to without these kind of funds being available,” she says. “John has called for other businesses to take on this kind of role. We would support that because it’s so individual, it’s so personal to students, it’s not just about money.”