Experiential learning · Leadership · International citizenship · X-Factor
Give every student a chance to make a positive impact.
X-Factor-Ed helps schools turn everything outside the classroom — leadership, camps, expeditions and service — into one system that students run and teachers support and coach. Developed over more than two decades at Markham College, Lima, and now offered to schools in Australia, Latin America and beyond.
See a trip with a purpose
Three minutes in Peru with X-Factor-Ed: Lima, the Andes, the Amazon, and a community project built with the families who live there.
Video by Jarz for X-Factor-Ed.
Conventional schooling is still very ‘controlled’ by adults. Students don’t often feel like they have any ‘say’ in what happens in ‘their’ school.
Harry Hildebrand, founder
In many schools, leadership is a badge for a handful of prefects, and trips are perhaps tourism. The students who most need a push rarely get one. X-Factor-Ed starts from the opposite assumption: every student is capable of leading something, and they will surprise you (and themselves) when they do.
What changes in your school
Leadership opportunities for everyone
Leadership teams, not lone ‘captains’. Older students mentor younger ones, student leaders design and take part in running the day, and teachers support and coach from the ‘sidelines’. Leadership is about opportunities students have, not just the prefects.
Experiences that mean something
Camps, expeditions and community projects designed so students take part in the planning, the thinking and the preparation, then ‘unpack’ it together in the X-Factor-Ed journal.
Service with empathy, not sympathy
Students design projects with communities, never for them.
Proof in a Victorian government school
Wangaratta High School
Wangaratta High School restructured its student leadership with Harry, then took students to Peru in 2026 on a trip ‘…with a purpose’: building homes alongside two families in Chincha.
In Chincha the focus shifted from learning about communities to working alongside them. The families had already invested in the project by contributing towards the concrete slabs and worked shoulder to shoulder with our students throughout the build.
Amy Noble, teacher, Wangaratta High School
How it works
1
A conversation
A 30-minute call about your school, what’s working and what isn’t.
2
Time in your school
Harry spends time with your staff, students and parents before he proposes anything.
3
A program built for you
Around six months, with the staff you nominate coached to run it. A Peru expedition can be part of it.
Meet Harry
Harry has been challenging students to step out of the classroom — and their comfort zone — for many, many years.
I love it when kids say to me, ‘I had no idea that I was even capable of doing that.’
Harry Hildebrand
Start with a conversation.
Tell us about your school. Harry reads every enquiry himself and will reply personally.