Helping a child learn to take responsibility for their actions is one of the most important tasks of childhood, and one of the trickiest. The line between healthy accountability and unhelpful shame is finer than it sometimes seems, and getting…

Academic results matter. But the universities that receive thousands of equally qualified applicants each year are not just looking at grades. They are looking for young people who have led, contributed, committed to something, and grown beyond the classroom. At…

Problem solving is one of those skills that everyone claims to value and few schools or families teach directly. The teenage years are an ideal time to develop it, because young people are increasingly capable of taking on real responsibility…

Independent study is one of those skills that schools assume teenagers will develop, parents assume schools are teaching, and teenagers themselves often pick up only by trial and error. The truth is that genuine independence in study habits takes deliberate…

The personal statement is one of the strangest pieces of writing a teenager will ever attempt. Asked to sum themselves up for a university admissions tutor they will never meet, in a few hundred carefully chosen words, while also juggling…

There is a particular look on a child’s face when something has genuinely caught their imagination. A pause, a tilt of the head, a slow widening of the eyes. That moment of wonder is one of the great pleasures of…