At The Oratory we believe that there is an important difference between being fully qualified and fully human.

Groundedness, Wholeness and Kindness are created by the right ethos and environment. This is what helps you build habits that will serve you for life and allow you to be of service to others. These are the sort of qualities that will, without doubt, be to the fore in all your achievements: in your life’s critical encounters, your choice of career and your progress through the world. The sort of talents and values that make you a good human being.

Much of this formation of the whole person is made possible by our size. We are big enough to have established our own route to academic success – The Oratory Ex Umbris Learning Culture – which goes well beyond preparation for exams to preparation for a life of curiosity and exploration. We are big enough to offer an impressive, high performing array of teams in many sports and to have a top flight co-curricular programme. For example, as well as all the major sports, we play Real Tennis and golf, we row, we fence, we hike. Therefore, unsurprisingly, we have an enviable reputation within our sector. And yet we remain, quite deliberately, small enough that we can know every one of our students in the way that their parents know them – the hopes and fears, the enthusiasms and trepidations. We have created an atmosphere that is challenging yet not intimidating, because education here happens one student at a time.

We are not, and do not aspire to be an academic hothouse. Think of us more as a greenhouse, where growth and flourishing happen naturally in a place of joy and safety. Walk around our hundred acres overlooking the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside. We think you will find it to be a place with a profound capacity for happiness. That is why our students perform beyond expectation. We add to their lives. We make them more. Put simply, that’s our job.

The Oratory. Be you. Become more.