#045 - Will Orr-Ewing | Aristocratic tuition, and why GCSEs are failing everyone
From Anglofuturism by Tom Ough and Calum Drysdale
March 4, 2026 · 48 min
About this episode
Will Orr-Ewing discusses the failures of the GCSE system and the impact of state schooling on intellectual growth.
Will Orr-Ewing has spent 20 years tutoring and founded Keystone Tutors , but he’s not here to tell you to hire a maths tutor for your nine-year-old. His argument is bigger: that Britain once had a culture of self-directed intellectual growth that state schooling quietly strangled, that the billion-pound tutoring industry is almost entirely pointed at the wrong goals, and that the GCSE system is simultaneously boring the top of the cognitive distribution and failing the bottom. Tom and Calum receive him in the somewhat dusty schoolroom of the King Charles III Space Station to design an Anglofuturist curriculum—and debate whether the state can ever do what a parent, a tutor, or a good book can. Tom, Calum, and Will discuss: * Why tutoring is a superpower pointed at mediocre ends: “You’ve got this massive potential for intellectual expansion, but directed at very menial, mediocre ends.” The billion-pound industry is almost entirely Kumon-style drilling or GCSE cramming. The mimetic relationship between tutor and student—where the neophyte absorbs not just knowledge but how someone thinks—is almost entirely wasted on exam prep. * The autodidactic culture that state schooling killed…
People in this episode
Hosts: Tom Ough, Calum Drysdale
Guest: Will Orr-Ewing
Topics covered
- education
- tutoring
- GCSEs
- self-directed learning
- state schooling
- intellectual growth
Keywords
- tutoring
- GCSE
- education reform
- self-education
- intellectual culture
- autodidacticism
- state education
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Keystone Tutors
Places: Britain, King Charles III Space Station
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