Our Ethos
Relationships before learning. Learning before results.
YoungEducation has worked with students in Stevenage and across Hertfordshire since 2010, through Alternative Provision and through private tuition at home and online. The setting changes. What we believe about students does not.
What we believe
Meaningful progress begins with positive relationships
Before learning can flourish, a student needs to feel understood, respected and encouraged. That is not a soft preliminary to the real work. It is the condition that makes the real work possible, and it is the reason we spend the first weeks of any programme on things that do not look much like a syllabus.
It also shapes the language we use. When a student has struggled, we treat that as something that happened to them rather than something they are, and the job is to work out what helps now. We build confidence before expectations, relationships before results, and opportunities before limitations.
Our Promise
Every young person deserves someone who believes in them.
Our mission is to provide more than an alternative to mainstream education. We create personalised pathways that inspire confidence, develop resilience and prepare young people for successful futures.
The four principles
Four things we hold to, whoever we are working with
They were written for Alternative Provision. They apply just as plainly to a Tuesday evening Maths session at a kitchen table.
Build trusting relationships
Help students feel safe, understood and ready to learn. This comes first, and it stays first on the weeks when the timetable is under pressure.
Deliver personalised tuition
Support academic progress while recognising individual strengths and interests. No two plans should look the same, because no two students do.
Develop confidence and independence
Through mentoring, practical experience and real-world learning, so that progress does not depend on us being in the room.
Create positive futures
Prepare students for further education, employment and adulthood, and treat that preparation as part of the work rather than an afterthought.
In practice
This is us everyday
Values are easy to write and harder to keep. These are the specific habits we hold ourselves to, and the ones worth asking us about.
- The right support at the right time, rather than the same support for everyone
- Confidence built before expectations are raised
- Small milestones noticed and celebrated, not saved up for an exam season
- Challenges described as things that happened to a student, never as who they are
- Communication that leaves families and professionals genuinely informed
- Programmes that are reviewed and changed, not set once and left alone
Two divisions, one ethos
How that ethos reaches students
YoungEducation runs two divisions. They serve different situations and answer to different people, and they are held to the same standard.
Alternative Provision
Personalised full or part-time provision for young people aged 5 to 18 who are not in mainstream school, commissioned by Local Authorities, schools and Multi-Academy Trusts, and by families where appropriate.
Academic learning, specialist mentoring, wellbeing support and practical pathways such as barbering, music production, cooking, sport and woodwork, all inside one timetable.
Private Tuition
Tuition arranged directly with families, delivered either at home or online, for students who need focused support alongside school rather than instead of it.
Home Tuition brings a tutor to the student. Online Tuition covers the same ground remotely where distance, timing or comfort make that the better fit. Both are built around what the student is actually working on.
The same standard
Whichever door a student comes through
A commissioned placement and a weekly tuition session are different pieces of work. The person on the other side of the table is not a different kind of person, and the standards we hold do not move to suit the contract.
Safeguarding sits underneath all of it. It is not simply a statutory responsibility. It is the foundation upon which everything else is built, and it is the first thing we would want a commissioner or a parent to interrogate.
- Qualified teachers, specialist mentors and experienced tutors
- Programmes reviewed against how the student is actually doing
- Progress shared with the people who need to know it
- Safeguarding treated as the foundation everything else is built on
In their words
The measure we actually care about
The greatest measure of our success is the positive difference we make to the lives of the young people and families we support.
Parent
For the first time in years, my child actually looks forward to learning. The team took the time to understand them, and the difference in their confidence has been incredible.
Young Person
I didn't think I'd enjoy education again, but everyone believed in me before I believed in myself. I've made friends, achieved qualifications and found something I'm really good at.
Together, let's empower young minds
If any of this sounds like the support a young person in your life needs, the next step is a conversation rather than a form. Tell us the situation and we will be straight with you about whether we can help.