23 Aug 07

When Eilidh Brown from Sheffield opens her envelope with GCSE results today, she will already be thinking about university. She is part of Oxford University's Ambassador Programme, which started in 2005.

Two cohorts totalling 43 students have already committed to the four-year long programme. The Ambassador Programme was developed to enable the students to go back to their classes, schools and community to talk about higher education using Oxford University as an example.

While the first cohort is pondering GCSE results, the second cohort is busy working in Oxford. Following on from a weekend team-building trip earlier in the year, 16 students are currently spending a week at Oxford working hard on presentation skills. None of the students seems to be fazed about giving up a week's holiday. 'It's a privilege,' said Natanael from Battersea Technology College in London.

'We're in four groups and each has been given a case study for a presentation to work on,' explained Temba from Withywood Community School in Bristol. 'Ours is: Isn't Oxford for clever people from posh private schools?'

'The idea behind this week is for them to develop presentation skills which can be used as part of their roles as Ambassadors. We want them to find out for themselves how to approach the relevant issues that their peers might be asking them, and how best to pass on what they've learnt about Oxford', said Tara Prayag, Access Co-ordinator at Oxford who runs the Scheme.

The week's teamwork sessions are supplemented with talks by students and tutors from the University and plenty of extracurricular activity. 'Yesterday, we had a Taming of the Shrew workshop in the morning and went to see the actual show in the evening', said Rio from Holgate School in Nottinghamshire.

At the end of the week, each group will give its presentation to the other groups, their parents and the student mentors who have been looking after them. The Ambassadors will then take their presentations back to their schools.

And while all of this is going on, 37 students in schools across the country are about to receive a letter congratulating them for having been accepted to the third cohort, which will be launched before Christmas.

The Ambassador Programme is supported by the Sutton Trust.