Every child has potential to succeed in the classroom setting, so believes Doyle Butterfield, director of the newly established Oxford Learning Centre.The alternative learning facility for children aged three to 19-years-old officially opened its doors last week. According to Mr Butterfield, it’s an answered prayer for some parents.“A lot of people have phoned and they just say ‘Thank you. We have needed something like this for a long time.”He said the success of the programme was due to its cognitive approach to learning designed by educational experts and based on proven scientific research about how children actually learn.The programme, founded in Canada in 1984, shows children how to understand and properly retain new information, rather than just memorising facts.Mr Butterfield said: “We are able to identify their learning styles and work with their skill sets and a lot of people like the individuality about it.“Especially around this time when the economy is going through challenges people want to give their children a good chance in life. They say a country’s best investment is its people and people’s resources are their children. So parents will do anything they can for their kids.“We have parents in here who do not have jobs and have been laid off and wanted to make sure their children came to Oxford.”The father-of-two once suffered with dyslexia and hand-eye co-ordination problems himself as a child. He therefore knows all too well some of the academic challenges that young people have to overcome in the traditional classroom setting.Mr Butterfield said he was “luckily” diagnosed fairly early on by doctors at Sick Kids Hospital in Canada and down the road in high school met a teacher “who knew how to use that information and take my strengths and use them to compliment my weaknesses”.“I think we all have potential. It just takes the right key to unlock the door to success. And we [at Oxford Learning Centre] have the master or skeleton key to do this for everyone.”Oxford Learning Centre operates under the ratio of one teacher for every three students. “It allows them to work independently and get the support they need,” said Mr Butterfield.The small class sizes also allow children freedom to attempt to answer questions without fear about getting it wrong, said education co-ordinator Francine Weinman.“You can say whatever you feel you want to say or write what you need to write and the programme ensures we celebrate you for using your mind.“A lot of these kids are passive learners and have low self-esteem in terms of school work and they are going to sit in that class and be afraid to speak up.“We are breaking that and saying it’s OK to make a mistake. We want you to always be using that brain.”Ms Weinman, who served as a learning support teacher for the past nine years, is one of three teachers at Oxford Learning Centre.She said the programme is “totally different” from any other programme on the Island and serves to supplement, not replace, the traditional education system.Unlike tutoring, it provides children with lifelong learning skills. “We are enriching them from where they are at so it doesn’t matter if they are two or five years below, we are starting where they are at and teaching them strategies to become life long learners, think for themselves and understand why they are doing things.”The centre is aiming to get approximately 50 young people registered for their services and in the future hope to expand.The core programme is offered Mondays, Wednesdays and Thursdays from 4pm until 8pm at 66 King Street, Hamilton, in the Brown Brangman Building. They also plan to offer the Little Readers programme throughout the week and workshops on the weekends.For more information or to book a space phone 296-6060 or e-mail bermuda[AT]oxfordlearning.com.Useful website: www.oxfordlearning.com/bermuda