STEM excellence. GCSE, iGCSE and A-levels. Practical project mastery.
At Catalyst, students achieve exceptional, verifiable academic outcomes — including dropping just 1 mark to score 269/270 in OCR A Level Chemistry — through dedicated 1-to-1 teaching, audited AI collaboration, and hands-on project mastery. The Catalyst AI Diploma runs alongside formal qualifications, ensuring students graduate with accredited examination credentials and a portfolio of real, defended engineering work.
How the programme is structured.
Foundation
Rigorous STEM subject foundations across the curriculum, with daily 1-to-1 coaching with subject masters. AI literacy is taught explicitly from Year 9 — prompt logging, model failure modes, bias, and provenance. Students begin their first project cycles here, building the cognitive discipline that will carry them through their GCSEs, iGCSEs and beyond.
GCSE, iGCSE & Diploma Core
Students sit formal GCSE and iGCSE examinations across Pearson Edexcel, Cambridge Assessment, and Oxford AQA specifications. Alongside this, five extended Diploma projects run across two years, each supervised by a specialist educator and defended orally in a public viva. Both tracks reinforce each other.
A-Level, International A-Level & Senior Phase
Students complete formal A-Levels and International A-Levels backed by audited results (such as our 269/270 OCR Chemistry outcome). Simultaneously, they specialise in advanced STEM research through extended projects with faculty mentors — producing production software, working hardware, and viva-defended monographs.
Broad subject teaching with project cycles built in.
In Years 7–9, students study the full curriculum. There are no exams, but there is rigour — daily reading, mathematics every day, hands-on science, languages, history and geography, art, music and physical education. AI tutors run alongside teachers to deliver instant feedback, retrieval practice and one-to-one support.
Each term ends with a short project cycle: a piece of work, a public presentation, and a defence. The skill we are building is the habit of finishing things, defending them, and learning from the questions.
View Detailed KS3 Term-by-Term Pathways →
The Catalyst AI Diploma — Phase 2
From age 14, the work gets serious. Students complete five extended projects over two years. Each project takes a full term, is supervised by a subject specialist, ends in a viva, and lives in a portfolio that follows the student to whatever comes next.
Why this exists
Real-world success requires both: top-tier academic qualifications (GCSEs, iGCSEs, A-Levels) to open doors, and project competence to excel once inside. People are paid to scope problems, gather what they need, ship things that work, and explain every choice in them. The Diploma teaches that capability directly alongside formal examination excellence. By 16, our students have achieved stellar exam results and shipped five substantial pieces of work each — and can talk about every line, every decision, every dead end.
The five units
Build & Ship
Design, build and release a working AI-powered tool that solves a real problem for a real user. Assessed on code quality, user research and ethical review.
Investigate & Argue
A long-form research project on a contemporary issue. AI assistance is permitted and logged; the viva tests independent understanding.
Model & Simulate
Build a quantitative model of a system — economic, environmental, biological — and defend its assumptions, limits and failure modes.
Create & Critique
Produce a substantial creative work (writing, film, music, design) that uses AI tools deliberately, with a written critical commentary.
Capstone
A self-directed project of the student's design, supervised by a faculty mentor and an external partner. Public showcase at year-end.
How it's assessed
| Component | Weight | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Portfolio of work | 50% | The five project artefacts, with provenance logs and reflective commentary. |
| Viva voce | 30% | One-to-one defence with internal and external assessors. Tests independent understanding. |
| Process journal | 10% | Weekly entries showing iteration, dead ends and what was learned. |
| Public showcase | 10% | Capstone presentation to faculty, families and an invited external panel. |
What students leave with at 16
A Catalyst student finishing Phase 2 at 16 holds: their GCSE and iGCSE results (verified exam performance across Pearson Edexcel, Cambridge, and Oxford AQA specifications, exemplified by 269/270 in OCR A Level Chemistry), a Catalyst AI Diploma award (Distinction* to Pass), the full project portfolio, and — crucially — internationally recognised industry certifications including AWS Certified Engineer and Red Hat credentials. These are not school certificates. They are the real vendor-issued qualifications that technology employers use to hire working engineers. A Catalyst 16-year-old holds them.
Qualified engineers. At sixteen.
Alongside GCSEs, iGCSEs and the Catalyst AI Diploma, every Phase 2 student earns globally recognised industry certifications. These are not school awards — they are the same credentials working engineers hold, issued by the vendors themselves, accepted by employers across every major sector worldwide.
The age our students hold AWS and Red Hat certifications. Most technology professionals never sit these exams. Our students complete them as part of their standard programme by the time they turn sixteen.
AWS Certified Engineer
The global benchmark for cloud infrastructure. Students design, deploy, secure and manage cloud systems to AWS professional standards — the same certification used to hire cloud engineers at banks, technology firms and government agencies worldwide.
Red Hat Certified Technician
Red Hat's industry-leading enterprise Linux and system administration certification. Recognised across defence, finance, healthcare and technology sectors globally. A credential that most IT professionals spend years working toward.
Further industry certifications
Depending on a student's specialism, additional certifications in cybersecurity, networking, data engineering and cloud platforms may also be completed. All are vendor-issued, globally portable, and employer-recognised.
What this means in practice
A Catalyst leaver at 16 walks into sixth form, college, or the job market holding credentials that adults in the technology industry spend years trying to earn. Universities notice. Employers notice. This is the Catalyst difference.
A-Level excellence & university-grade STEM specialism.
From 16, our students go deep. Each Senior Phase student sits formal A-Levels or International A-Levels, supported by intensive 1-to-1 tuition with subject masters. In parallel, they spend two years on extended research projects with university and industry mentors in their chosen STEM specialisms. The output delivers the best of both worlds: exceptional A-Level grades that satisfy traditional university matriculation requirements, alongside a defended body of engineering work that distinguishes them in elite degree programmes and selective industry careers.
Mathematics
Pure, applied and computational mathematics. Symbolic AI as a "second pair of eyes" on proofs; original problem-solving as the assessed output.
Physics & Engineering
From electromagnetism to robotics. Workshop access, in-house fabrication, and advanced engineering prototyping.
Chemistry
Molecular visualisation, reaction prediction and synthesis planning alongside empirical practical work.
Biology & Bioinformatics
Working with real genomic and ecological datasets using AI-assisted analysis. Empirical assays and computational sequence modeling.
Computer Science & AI
Students build and deploy real production systems — LLM-based applications, ML pipelines, embedded systems. Outputs combine working production software with rigorous A-Level examination mastery.
Research methods
A shared spine for every senior student: literature review, experimental design, statistics, technical writing, peer review.
What the timetable looks like.
Subject teaching
Timetabled lessons across the curriculum, with AI-supported feedback loops. Written work returned within 24 hours.
Project workshop
Protected afternoon for project work. Faculty mentors available; AI tools used openly and logged.
Subject teaching
Lessons designed around the previous day's AI-generated retrieval practice and intervention groupings.
Build day & weekly defence
Full day of project work, ending with a stand-up where each student presents progress to peers and faculty.