Lab
Lab is one of the unique aspects of Harris Westminster Life. Every Tuesday afternoon all students work independently in school, outside of a formal timetabled environment. It is a time for scholarly focus, for collaboration, for 1:1 sessions with teachers, for exploration, and for reading. Teachers are always available for consultation at this time and students can make appointments to see them for catch-up, further explanation or extension sessions.
Harris Westminster reveals its most scholarly aspect on a Tuesday afternoon with students driving their own schedules and creatively and independently making use of the time and resources available to them. However, Lab is more than just a Tuesday afternoon activity: it is a state of mind of scholarly focus, of creative and independent application to working hard, to doing hard work and to getting into those top universities across the world.
Every Tuesday afternoon there is also a Lab lecture: students can elect to spend one hour of the session listening to, and asking scholarly questions of, a vast range of immensely eminent and impressive speakers from across a range of disciplines. A list of some of the speakers and the lectures from this year is given below.
Finally, a small number of students is invited after each lecture to Principal’s Tea where they are able to interact with the guests in a smaller group and hone their intellectual and networking skills.
The following list gives you a taste of some of the Lab lectures that have taken place in the last academic year:
| Jane Austen's Emma | Professor John Mullan |
| Shipbroking and the city | Nick Wood |
| Politics – why I do what I do | Ben Gummer MP |
| The future of Left & Right in British Politics | Lord Wood of Anfield |
| Human rights debate | Shami Chakrabarti |
| Safe nuclear energy is cheap nuclear energy | Dr Ian Scott |
| Insights from Silicon Valley | Brandon Bichler |
| A new life of Charles II | Dr Clare Jackson |
| The Syrian crisis in Lebanon: perspectives of an aid worker | Anna Hirsch-Holland |
| Bodies of gods, teeth of yobs: oral health and elite sport performance | Professor Ian Needleman |