A brand new free wellbeing careers show for year 11 students entering their GCSEs.
Learn MoreGCSE boost is a 2 day careers/live event, taking place at the world renowned Aerospace Bristol on the 13th and 14th of March 2025. The event is for up to 4,000 year 11 students from Bristol and the surrounding areas. It will engage and inspire students, focusing on topics such as: well-being, mental health, diet and nutrition, motivation and aspirations and GCSE exam techniques.
These topics will be covered by four, live, key note speakers who will present Ted-x style talks. This will all take place while underneath the world famous Concorde as an inspirational visual aid.
The goal is simple; to allow Year 11 students to feel better as they go into the exam season. Gaining useful information from an event where the environment is inspiring and the speakers have engaging and useful information for learners to use within their exams. Furthermore, the organisations and employers are approachable for students, regardless of their results.
GCSE Boost will be important to all students in Bristol. Regardless of how academic learners might be, the common thread between them is that many factors like anxiety, mental health and low self-esteem often play a factor during the exam process and their journey throughout the year. Year 11 is a stressful and uncertain time, due to many learners having expectations set from parents, carers and social circles.
Bristol has a culturally diverse range of students from all over the world and this is celebrated in many ways in present-day Bristol.
GCSE boost intends to not only support students in mainstream education but also aims to share the message of impartiality for learners who may have not had a traditional route in school. This is equally as important. The founder, Junior, knows this first hand as he spent his life in foster care in Bristol and was expelled from 4 different schools. He strongly supports inclusivity in businesses while organising GCSE Boost for learners.
Junior understands that there are two types of learners. Those who are academic and those who are visual learners. Regardless of students backgrounds they will all face the same challenges when they are in the exam room on their own.
“We are really excited for all our year 11 students to attend GCSE Boost in 2025. Having worked with Junior before, I have been impressed by how he manages to engage all students and really get them thinking hard about how they can help themselves to get the best possible outcomes. The big appeal of GCSE Boost is the balanced focus of study techniques, but also self-care, which is so important for students to understand if they are going to fulfil their potential.”
“GCSE Boost is a chance for students to really get focused and feel positive about the exam season ahead in 2025. St Katherine’s students will find it an invaluable morning while attending GCSE Boost, leaving them inspired and motivated for the upcoming months of dedication and hard work. Our students at St Katherine’s welcome Juniors vision for GCSE Boost with open arms as he is such an inspiration and we look forward to attending.”
Lewis Wedlock is an activist, academic and social psychologist. His work centres around exploring and challenging structures that limit pathways to expressing magnificence. He became one of the UK's youngest lecturers at 22, has stepped on a TEDx stage and has produced one of the world's most popular podcasts on Masculinity called "Mendable". Lewis has worked with thousands of young people across the UK, helping them to explore and understand their personal magnificence.
Having years in the farming landscape as his dad was a farmer a passion for the process of having a meaningful diet came early. Reese is not only passionate about the importance of food and nutrition for learners while going into their GCSE exams but has spent many years presenting to secondary school students a very unique programme that has really benefited learners’ choices around their diet. Reese’s engaging and inspiring style will allow learners to actively think about the dietary choices they make as well as provide some useful tips around meal prep to learners are able to take the proactive approach in one of the most important times in their lives.
Boost 100 is a brand-new exciting scheme to get 100 big and SME businesses from around the South West to pledge 1k each towards allowing GCSE boost to happen in 2025 and for students to have a meaningful inspiring event to help them with the wellbeing towards their exams.
We have a unique opportunity for employers/organisations within the Bristol area who recruit students to join us in 2025 through recruiting them for an Apprenticeship, College an Independent Training provider or 6th form to join us for GCSE Boost in 2025. By buying a recruitment stand at our event will add so much value to your company’s social reasonability aims in 2025 as well as have meaningful conversations that could lead to lead generation of Year 11 students for your business.
Get in touchJunior Saunders spent most of his life in foster care and didn’t have a strong educational experience while growing up. He experienced many difficulties, such as living with ADHD and dyslexia whilst also tackling setbacks as a child in care in Bristol in the 1990s.
After almost going to a young offenders unit at aged 14 and while in the Marlowe Children’s Home in Gloucester, Junior made the decision in year 10 that he wanted to return home to his foster mother Pearl, go back to mainstream education and finish his GCSEs. This was because he wanted the sense of belonging. Many of his peers were in mainstream school, while Junior was based on a programme called “Include” for students who found the mainstream school setting difficult to adjust to.
Junior wanted that sense of achievement despite all the setbacks that he faced. As he entered year 11 no schools in Bristol would accept him due to his educational journey, except for one, Lockleaze School. Throughout this, he was supported by Pearl Miles (his foster mother) Leroy Henderson (his probation officer and mentor) Mark Farmer (his School coach/ mentor) and Ray Lockey (The Head Teacher of Lockleaze School). These four professionals contributed, unknowingly at the time, towards the idea of GCSE Boost being born in 2025.
Junior now runs Junior Inspiring Education. This is a student personal development service for secondary school students on behalf of schools, businesses and organisations. It teaches students about personal development into careers and apprenticeships throughout the UK. Junior Inspiring Education is about to launch a brand-new tool to help apprentices through the interview process called the APDL log.