Inkhead began in 2006, when Louise Pearce started running a Saturday morning club in her house in leafy, South London. There were just 4 children in attendance. We still refer to these as “The Original Inkheaders”.

Louise had just finished a Masters in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths College, University of London and was keen to use her skills and expertise to inspire the next generation in their innate creativity. Her mission was to be the encouraging voice that she felt was lacking in education when she was growing up. This remains core to our mission as a company: to give children the space to explore their creativity that otherwise might be quashed before it has even begun.

We are well-versed in the arts of passing examinations such as 7+, 8+, 9+ 10+ and of course, the 11+ and are sensitive to the ever-changing goalposts of these examinations. If your child needs specific attention to their comprehension or their creative writing, then we really know how to give them the best tuition experience.

However, our mission is greater than only passing exams. We want to give our students tools for creativity and critical thinking that far exceed the classroom and the hour tuition we spend with them.

We want to unleash and lead a new generation of children who are connected to their creativity and use that to change the world. This is what we see as the core of our mission.

We have since grown to become a thriving enterprise with over ten dedicated tutors busy expanding the horizons of creativity for kids all over London, and more recently, in Singapore!

Those children who attended the early workshops of Inkhead are now fully grown adults themselves, who have attended prestigious universities, and they still speak fondly of how they chose more ambitious careers because of the writing skills and confidence they gained in those first, heady workshops!

Who knows what will be unlocked for your child when they attend our courses or private tuition?

Our idea is simple:

What if children could unlock their creativity through creative writing?

Studies (such as Grainger, Goouch & Lambirth's) have shown that creative writing increases children’s confidence, and that this confidence in creative writing has benefits across the board for their general academic attainment and wellbeing.

But what is it specifically about creative writing that’s so brilliant for building a child’s confidence?

One reason is that creative writing is a space where children can bring their own personal interests into the classroom. One child might be excited about dragons, another might spend hours reading Jacqueline Wilson novels, or dreaming of inventing worlds just like the ones in their favourite video games - all through their creative writing!

We have been striving for over 15 years to help the next generation express themselves through their creative writing.

Creative writing means that children can take their more formally developed writing skills such as spelling, grammar, punctuation, expressiveness, editing and critical reading, and are able to apply these creative writing skills to other areas of their life.

When you present a child with a creative writing approach to creating a new poem, they can bring knowledge from their own interests to explain to you how happiness is as sparkling as a dragon’s breath.

Our bespoke creative writing services use the latest educational practices to facilitate the best learning environment for your child’s creativity to flourish.

We know that each child learns in a unique manner; everyone’s brain is different. To that end, we tailor our creative writing tuition to your child.

But not only that, because they are creating creative writing around topics that they’re interested in, they’re also likely to be creating writing around topics that their peers are interested in, too.

Creative writing for an audience of peers about topics where they are the experts, means that the children are able to explore, play and develop their creative writing in the way they use the written word to express themselves - all from a foundation of confidence!

All our tutors have professional success in the field of writing whether it’s poetry awards, journalistic excellence, plays in London theatres or published novels. These people are experts and have been for many years.

For private, one-on-one tuition, we offer a free 15 minute Zoom taster session to see if your child clicks with the tutor we provide for you. We very rarely have to pick a second tutor, such is the success rate of our tutors as people, writers and teachers.

From there, we usually recommend our tutors visit our clients in-person. Online tuition works really well too but we think those first few sessions in person can really build the relationship. We are always flexible to your requirements for a creative writing tutor.

Yes, we absolutely do! We are currently planning our summer holiday courses, so please check back on the relevant page for more information soon.

Children develop at different rates and we can optimise their experience as best we can but there will always be the unpredictable rate of their growth and maturity. As a former primary and prep school teacher for five years, John has seen children at 8 do what children at 12 couldn’t. There really is that much of a wide range in children’s learning ability. The examinations push for a certain type of intelligence and a lot of it is focussed on taxing a child’s working memory. Often, some children’s brains just haven’t developed to remember more than 3 or 4 things at once. And that’s OK!

A tutor can help the child make select better options and by helping place more of their learning in their long-term memory, it frees up space in their working memory for reacting to the world or exam paper in front of them. That’s part of what we see the role of the tutor to be: to help a student to retain more information in their long-term memory, to make new connections with this and to help the students pursue their own learning, more deeply and at a quicker rate.

If you are going for the 11+, then depending on the abilities of your child, we would recommend that the beginning of Year 5 is when you would really be starting to think about tutoring.

We would say if you are very ambitious and want your child to go to the top London Day schools, then sometime in Y4 is when a tutor would come in.

Some parents are now thinking about targeting the 7+ as it is less competitive entry point, based on the volume of numbers. It is a rational strategy, but your child is a greater variable at this point. In our view, they would have to be very mature for their age for this to work. For 11+, the child can be coached to a greater degree to make up for any shortfalls in their knowledge and skills.

Again, if you are reading this and would like to know more, please feel free to get in touch, John is very happy to speak on the phone or email. Working in London’s elite prep schools for so long has given him a good insight into how it all works from the inside.