Tudor House is confident it delivers an education for a lifetime.

July 26 2012 by John Stewart, Headmaster

Tudor House featured – although briefly – on The Project last Sunday night. The focus was on boys’ education. This seems to re-emerge in the educational debate on a regular basis every couple of years. There are reasons.

Boys are underperforming girls as a group in every aspect of literacy in every year group. NAPLAN results show boys underperforming girls 2008 to 2011.
However, in Numeracy, boys are still outperforming girls as a group.

The education of boys is in question.

Tudor House is different – and unique – because we focus specifically on teaching boys. For over 115 years we have specialised in educating boys. Our curriculum is developed to give boys the opportunity to move, to provide boys with boy-centric material, to teach in a way that is directly focused on maleness.
The Project came to us because of our time-honoured approach. It works.

But when we say – it works – what do we mean?

Boys education is quality education. Boys need to have interest, competition, challenge, support, parameters, fairness and humour mixed and threaded through the day.

And education needs time.

We need to understand and trust the benefits of Tudor House for the long term.

As was highlighted in a debate on television this week, we should not see education as a short term fix. We will not see the full rewards of what we sow until decades into the future.

I hold onto a Chinese proverb:
If you are thinking one year in the future, plant grass.
If you are thinking ten years in the future, plant a tree.
If you are thinking one hundred years in the future, educate the people.

It is true that our modern society is time poor and so we look for immediate gains. We look to see if in one year we can see real progress. That is possible but only in the context of outcomes or test results.

Holistic education is about the whole child – and this takes years to nurture and blossom. How then can we know Tudor House adds true ‘value’? How can we be sure Tudor House – and the investment we make in boys’ education – actually ‘works’?

Unlike other schools, the benefits of Tudor House in the long term are clearly identified because we have old boys still raving about their educational experience at Tudor. And the core of this experience has NOT changed. It has stood the passing of years – the changes in political climates and national agendas.

We can see the beauty of our little school in the achievements and lasting memories of generations of successful, educated men.