Wolsey Hall, Oxford

Curriculum

Wolsey Hall Oxford courses include Primary (Key Stage 2), Secondary Pre-IGCSE (Key Stage 3), IGCSE and A Level across a broad range of subjects. The IGCSE and A Level courses predominantly prepare students for the Cambridge International exam syllabi. The CIE qualifications are recognised for admission by top Universities around the world including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard and Stanford.

The IGCSE subjects offered number 18, including English, Maths, single subject and combined sciences, modern foreign languages, Latin, as well as the Humanities, Business Studies, and Accounting.

A level subjects covered include English, Maths, Biology, Physics, Economics, History, and Law.

Teaching methods

Wolsey Hall Oxford is a virtual college with no walls. Instead, a Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) is the repository for all course resources including assignments and assignment submissions. The VLE is also used as a means for students to communicate between themselves via the use of discussion forums and conferencing.

The VLE is supplemented with regular one-to-one tutor contact via skype and email and support from Student Support Managers.

History of Wolsey Hall Oxford

Wolsey Hall Oxford was founded in 1894 by Joseph William Knipe. At his teachers' college, he took such excellent lecture notes that the other students asked him to make copies for them. After graduating from college he decided that there might be some interesting teaching possibilities by combining first class lecture notes with an emerging nineteenth century new technology - "The Penny Post". In its first year Wolsey Hall Oxford had just 6 students.

In 1942, Wolsey Hall Oxford was appointed by the War Office to provide Courses for the forces and as such during the remaining war years was a key supplier of courses to members of the British Armed Services. A typical month in the Army would alternate between serious action and long stretches with little going on. Many servicemen and women used these quiet times to educate themselves for life back in "civvies" after the war ended.

During the 1930s–1980s, Wolsey Hall Oxford served as a provider of degree level courses via the University of London external degree programme.

After the war, demand for courses, especially GCE 'O' and 'A' levels and the external degrees of London University continued to grow. A number of the original typed lesson notes and test prompts from 1949/1950 London B.Sc Econ. degree are contained within the Magdalen College, University of Oxford, Library Archive. That was the period too when Wolsey Hall went truly international and there was a great growth in numbers of students studying from outside the UK, from countries such as Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, Kenya, Nigeria, Canada, Guyana, Mauritius, Jamaica and Trinidad.

Many years later Wolsey Hall Oxford launched the first distance learning MBA in 1985 with Warwick Business School. In the 1990s the College built on this experience and provided management development courses to a variety of blue chip organisations including British Airways, the Civil Aviation Authority (United Kingdom), Her Majesty's Prison Service, Lloyds TSB, Shell Exploration.

Wolsey Hall Oxford is considered as the pioneer in the field of correspondence degrees later entered by the Open University.

Today Wolsey Hall Oxford has refocused on its roots and offers a range of academic courses to both mature students and homeschoolers throughout the world, using web-based learning systems.

Principals of Wolsey Hall Oxford

Joseph Knipe - 1894

Percy Knipe - 1945

Ernest W. Shaw-Fletcher CBE - 1952

Wyndham Milligan - 1968

The Hon Frank Fisher CBE- 1983

John Coffey - 1990

Lee Wilcock - 2009 (Current)

Notable Wolsey Hall, Oxford students

Nelson Mandela – anti-apartheid activist, politician, philanthropist, human rights advocate. Mandela studied for his London University Law degree through a correspondence course with Wolsey Hall Oxford during his incarceration in Robben Island jail.

S.R. Nathan – President of Singapore, September 1999 – August 2011. As a means to confront his lack of a more advanced formal education, Nathan enrolled on a course with Wolsey Hall Oxford which he mentions in his autobiography, An Unexpected Journey: Path to the Presidency. He would rise at 4 am every day and study for three hours before going into the office for a full day’s work, followed by dealing with trade union matters. He would be back in bed by 8.30 pm in order to restart his studies the next morning.

George Chambers - The second post-independence Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago. Coming from lower middle-class origins and an early position as a legal clerk, Chambers' education included a GCE correspondence course with Wolsey Hall Oxford.

Sir Harold Evans - British-born journalist and writer and editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981. Evans studied economics with Wolsey Hall Oxford whilst an RAF airman at the end of WW2. He mentions his association with the college in his autobiographical book My Paper Chase – True Stories of Vanished Times.

Matthew Tawo Mbu - Nigerian lawyer, politician (Foreign Minister of Nigeria) and diplomat. His early education was at various Roman Catholic mission schools in Boki LGA, then Wolsey Hall Oxford (postal tuition), University College London and the Middle Temple, London.

David Martin (sociologist) – Sociologist and Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. Martin enrolled in the Wolsey Hall Oxford, London University external degree course in economics as a first step in his journey to becoming a sociologist which he mentions in his autobiography, The Education of David Martin: The making of an unlikely sociologist.

Emmanuel Afe Babalola - Nigerian lawyer, Senior Advocate of Nigeria and founder of Afe Babalola University. Emmanuel Afe Babalola began life in poverty and for all his youth and early adulthood lived in poverty. Under these difficult circumstances, he enrolled for the Senior Cambridge School Certificate examination by private study with Wolsey Hall Oxford which was the stepping stone he needed to begin his journey to become a lawyer.

Rev. Prof. Allen Brent - scholar of early Christian history and literature and Fellow of St Edmund's College, Cambridge. Brent left Grammar School at the age of 16, in 1957, with only three '0' levels in English Language, English Literature, and Religious Knowledge. Shortly after leaving school he developed an interest in Latin, Greek, Hebrew and Religious Knowledge, pursuing these initially through evening classes and via correspondence courses with Wolsey Hall Oxford.

Canon William Purcell - writer, BBC broadcaster and Canon of Worcester Cathedral. After an unhappy time as an advertising copywriter, Purcell took a correspondence course with Wolsey Hall Oxford which enabled him to enter Cardiff University to read English in 1931. In 1934 he went on to Keble College, Oxford, to read English, before going on to theological college in Birmingham.

Hansi Kennedy - pre-eminent child psychoanalyst, whose career began with Anna Freud in the Hampstead War Nurseries and continued at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. Despite her very full life in the war nurseries during the war, Hansi found time to study Maths, Biology, German and English through Wolsey Hall Oxford.

Chief (Dr) Kolawole Balogun – Nigerian politician and member of The National Council of Nigeria and the Cameroons (NCNC), which was a Nigerian political party from 1944 to 1966, during the period leading up to independence and immediately following independence. After his success in the London Matriculation Examination, Kola Balogun registered for the Intermediate Bachelor of Laws as an external student of the University of London as a correspondence student of Wolsey Hall Oxford.

Franklin C.O. Coker - the first president of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria. Coker registered to study Commerce at the University of London via postal tutorials from Wolsey Hall Oxford.

Sir Satcam Boolell - Deputy Prime Minister, Mauritius 1986-1990, Attorney General and Minister of Justice and Minister of External Affairs and Emigration of Mauritius. High Commissioner in London from 1996 to 2000. He was born in the village of New Grove and attended the primary school of the locality. In those difficult times, when education was the preserve of the privileged few, he privately educated himself, with correspondence courses from Wolsey Hall Oxford and private tuition, obtaining the London Matriculation in 1942 and an intermediate BSc in economics in 1945.