Today’s blog is written by our guest blogger, Sophie Holland from Westminster Abbey.
Since 2019, the Learning team at Westminster Abbey have run an annual A-level Masterclass. These sessions give students the opportunity to engage with an academic in a subject they’re studying and include a specially created lecture, as well as a Q&A where students submit their own questions to the speaker. The first Masterclass sessions took place at the Abbey, but since 2021 it’s been an online offer, making it accessible to a wider audience.
The aim of the Masterclass is to provide a taster of university for students but also to be an enrichment opportunity for their current studies. Previous Masterclasses have focused on RE and History, with topics including ‘Does science need God?’ with Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ and ‘Elizabeth I and Mary, Queen of Scots’ with John Guy.
We’re fortunate that the Abbey has strong links to many curriculum subjects, including Poets’ Corner, where more than 100 poets and writers are buried and remembered. In 2024 we ran our first English Masterclass in collaboration with Helen Hackett, Professor of English Literature at UCL. Based on her research interests, Helen was keen to explore female writers which felt like a perfect topic for our next Masterclass, and a great topic to tie into Women’s History Month in March. This became ‘Shakespeare’s Sisters: Early Women Writers in Westminster Abbey’
Masterclass was promoted in three marketing pushes on social media, via our schools’ newsletter and through direct contacts. Despite being a busy time in the academic year, it proved popular, with 159 students and 11 teachers attending from schools and colleges nationally, and even internationally.
One of the strengths of the lecture was how strongly it linked to the Abbey. Helen researched and explored the lives and writings of women buried or remembered here (including Elizabeth I, Aphra Behn and Margaret Cavendish) but also gave context to the location of their memorials. This was influenced by a research visit Helen made to the Abbey, which allowed us to get up close to the memorials and to collaboratively discuss the content of her lecture.
Feedback from teachers confirmed that Masterclass was an enriching experience for their students, which owes a lot to Helen’s passion for the topic. It was brilliant working with an academic who had experience in producing well-structured lectures. However, it was also useful to consider Helen an outside speaker and to provide her with guidance around things like language use, for example, to make sure we were on the same page.
After watching the lecture, students then had the opportunity to submit questions in advance of a live Q&A with Helen. We received 57 questions, which showed they had really engaged with the topic. One benefit of receiving questions in advance was that we could ensure that questions were asked across a range of topics, and from a number of different schools. Helen was also able to do some research in advance, to provide well-thought-out answers.
Overall, an event like Masterclass can be a great way to engage with A-level students, giving them the opportunity to meet an academic, to (hopefully) be inspired by our site and, importantly, to have the chance to ask their own questions in their own voice.
Sophie Holland, Westminster Abbey
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