West Norfolk undergraduates thrive at Oxbridge

Two former Springwood High School students are thriving after their first term at Oxbridge.

They have taken to life at two world-famous universities, and are looking forward to 2025 and all it brings, both academically and socially.

Both Ren Griffiths and Lexie Ampomah achieved their first choice courses at Oxford and Cambridge and they are getting to grips with life at a top university.

Lexie is at Hartford College, Oxford, where she is studying archaeology and anthropology after spending her secondary education at Springwood, a member of the West Norfolk Academies Trust.

“It is so very different from school and I don’t think you can really explain to people how different it is,” she said.

“The volume of work is one thing and I knew it would be challenging.”

Lexie, 19, followed her brother Josh who also studied at Oxford, but in engineering. In fact Lexie is the first of her family to not read a science subject.

“My dad’s a pharmacist, my mum’s a practice manager. My brother is into engineering and my whole family studied sciences. I am the only one to go for humanities,” she said.

The subjects she is reading mean Lexie has several options at the end of her time at Oxford, including the possibility of studying further and remaining in academia, but she hasn’t made any firm plans yet.

Ren Griffiths is a bit nearer home and studies at Cambridge University where she is reading human social and political sciences.

“It has been great and I’ve been very busy since starting,”she said.

Ren, 18, also said the experience was very different from life at school but said she was enjoying the environment and her subjects.

“There is definitely more work, and it’s harder - but I am really enjoying it,” she said.

She has joined the Cambridge Union, the oldest continuously-running debating society in the world and it has previously hosted guests as diverse as Professor Brian Cox and the singer James Blunt.

“I am the first person in the family to attend Cambridge, and to study the subject but my mum has an interest in current affairs and started my interest,” said Ren.

Although term at the university ended on December 6, she is stayed on longer to help with the prospective new undergraduates who were undergoing their interviews.