Our History
The Swot Shop has been providing its unique enrichment and extension programs to bright and gifted students from our centres in Baulkham Hills for over 30 years.
Founded in 1991 by teacher Ros Wolfers and supported by teachers Anne Hodgkins and later Jean Weimann, The Swot Shop started as a small educational extracurricular activity.
Our founders had a keen interest in the education of bright and gifted children. They initially started two weekly classes aimed at stimulating intellectual curiosity in students and to develop their higher-level thinking skills using innovative and engaging teaching approaches and activities developed specifically for the purpose. Our founders also spent significant time researching resources and creating materials for their teaching and later documented these.
Today, these programs, whilst modernised and changed to reflect many years of classroom experience and the changing educational and external environment, still form the backbone of our teaching reflecting the strong and timeless underlying educational philosophy and principles.
Delivered by qualified and experienced professional teaching staff, The Swot Shop programs are brought to life each year to a new group of students using the latest teaching methodologies and principles. They provide a holistic educational experience that nurtures students’ academic excellence and sharpens their appreciation of what it takes for them to truly achieve their potential.
Since the early beginnings, The Swot Shop has today become a professional educational service with two large centres in Baulkham Hills. Over the years many thousands of students have completed the Swot Shop program each year and benefitted from its unique learning experience and substantial educational impact.
Over the years, The Swot Shop has appeared on national tv and in print media as a ‘go-to’ in relation to privately run extracurricular education for bright and gifted students. This has included appearing on the current affairs program, Today Tonight focussing on the benefits of our preschool program and on Sixty Minutes who described the organisation as “the best education money can buy”.
Always evolving and adjusting to the changing needs of our clients and the community, The Swot Shop is currently undergoing exciting changes and expanding its team and activities.
The needs of bright and gifted students and their families are at the core of our mission and this work is as important now as it was when our founders started out all those years ago.
