Teaching Excellence

The tutorial system sees students meet one-to-one or in small groups with a leading academic whose research informs their teaching.

It is this teaching model which marks Oxford out from every other university. It provides students with a personalised and rigorous academic experience, preparing them to become global thinkers and leaders.

Pembroke is committed to maintaining the tutorial system, and our Teaching Excellence initiative aims to secure its future. This way of teaching is inherently more expensive than the conventional model of larger-group seminars and lectures. Over the past few years, it has come under increasing strain as a result of broader financial pressures in higher education and the decline in real terms of the value of tuition fees since 2017.

To secure the future of the tutorial system, the Imagine Pembroke campaign seeks to achieve the full endowment of each of our 34 Tutorial Fellowships. 13 have already been fully endowed through philanthropic support, and we now seek to secure the remainder. Our Fellowships brochure provides further information on what we hope to achieve and how you can help.

The College has already begun work to transform the Old Quad into a new hub for the tutorial system, with a major renovation taking place to restore this iconic part of our heritage and reconfigure each staircase to house tutorial rooms. These will be high-quality and set up for the tutorial of the future. An extremely generous donor has made an initial commitment of £5 million to enable this work to begin, and we now seek to secure additional funds to complete the project.