Earlscliffe education College

Who we are

With over fifty years’ joint experience in teaching and leading in well-known schools in England, our Director, Tim Fish and Head Teacher, Joss Williams are best-placed to provide an arena of academic stimulus, intellectual rigour, cultural enrichment, vigorous internationalism and, ultimately, personal success, in which our students perform to their very best abilities. Furthermore, we want Earlscliffe students to have fun when learning. The American Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman said, ‘the highest forms of understanding we can achieve are laughter and human compassion’.

We work alongside and lead a team of experienced academic subject teachers who provide our students with the knowledge, skills, motivation and enrichment necessary to attain high grades at A-level and subsequently undergraduate places at the UK’s best universities.

We both extend a warm invitation for you to visit Earlscliffe to discuss how we, together, can fulfil your highest aims.

Courses we offer

Almost all of the subjects on offer at Earlscliffe are seen as 'traditional' subjects and therefore readily accepted by the UK's best universities.

A-level International Transition Year (ITY) - One Year GCSE courseDukes University Foundation Certificate (DUFC)EPQ

IELTS Mid-course summer Extend & Enrich Business Diploma

The history of Earlscliffe

Earlscliffe was built in 1870 as a large, private house in Folkestone’s desirable West End, a short stroll from the sea and famous promenade, The Leas.

The main building on Shorncliffe Road has now existed as a centre for education for many years. Just as we welcome students from overseas today, so it was during the Second World War when it was home to the Dr Leonore Goldschmidt Schule, a school for German Jewish children who were brought from Berlin to the UK.

Earlscliffe was originally the large summer home of the Boddam-Whetham family of Kirklington Hall, near Nottingham, but became a school around 1923.

Accommodation

A large investment in 2012-16 saw a complete renovation and refurbishment of Earlscliffe.

We provide six boarding houses, three for girls and three for boys, all within easy walking distance of the main college. Most rooms are spacious twins with private WC and bathroom; each student has his or her own wardrobe and desk space, and all rooms are Wi-fi connected. The high standard of accommodation is attractive to today’s student, and all the more so given Earlscliffe’s beautiful Victorian façades. The classrooms and laboratory were also renovated and newly-equipped so that they provide a fresh, bright, yet intimate environment in which our students and staff go about their daily business.

All rooms and bathrooms are cleaned thoroughly on a daily basis, and laundry is done on a weekly basis. All boarding houses have laundry rooms provided where students can wash, dry and iron their own clothes if they prefer.

Meals

Meals are taken in the college dining room and prepared by our own chef and team.

Menus are varied and often international (e.g. Chinese, Mexican, Indian, and not forgetting the occasional British fish and chips). Any special dietary needs can be catered for, and we have a College Formal Dinner with an after-dinner speaker two or three times per term.

Students may choose to take lunch in either the School House Common Room (hot panini sandwiches and salad etc) or the main house Dining Room, where breakfast and evening dinner is served.

A sample of activities available to students each week

This is a sample week and the activities change regularly depending on students’ interests, the time of year and cultural events taking place in and around the school.
£ = An event/activity that will be charged as an extra. All other activities are included.

When each student arrives, parents are asked to give a ‘limit’ to how much each student will be charged per term to ensure that, if requested, parents are informed of all activity costs beforehand. The average cost of an activity can range from £10 – £50 and may only be the cost of a short bus/train/taxi ride, whilst other events such as theatre trips or paintballing/go-karting activities could be a little more expensive.

Teaching

Frequent, high-quality teaching contact time is essential to A-Level achievement.

We teach in small groups, with an average of nine to each class, so each one of our students receives the individual attention he or she needs, while gaining the benefits of learning in a group.

Key to our success is the amount of teaching allocated to most A-level subjects: nine contact lessons gives a total of 6hrs 45mins of valuable time in class per subject each week. We believe that contact time is a more effective way of filling the working week than ‘study time’ or so-called ‘free’ periods.

Young people come to Earlscliffe knowing they will work hard and receive all the help and guidance required to achieve their goals. Academic success comes as a result of ongoing support combined with rigour. We allocate intensive, lesson-based teaching to each chosen subject, and this is complemented by a student’s own dedication outside the classroom.