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From a boy who struggled to speak to building a different kind of academy

ERB Academy did not begin as a company.

It began with a boy trying to find his own way through education.

Growing up autistic, Ruddy did not experience school in the same way as everyone around him. For years, even expressing himself clearly was difficult. Until Grade 10, speaking confidently and communicating what was in his mind remained one of his greatest challenges.

But learning was different.

He became fascinated by finding simpler ways to understand difficult things — breaking a chapter down, recognising patterns, turning pages of information into a few ideas that actually made sense.

And eventually, he started sharing them.

In 2021, those ideas became simple educational videos online: small tips, explanations and techniques made for students who wanted someone to explain things differently.

There was no academy then. No large platform. No grand plan.

At the same time, life at home was difficult. His mother's medical condition placed increasing pressure on the household. Ruddy began teaching friends and other students for pocket money, partly because he loved teaching and partly because he wanted to contribute at home.

A few students became more.

The videos reached more people.

And something became increasingly obvious: many students were not struggling because they lacked intelligence.

They simply had never been taught how to learn.

Ruddy's own academic and personal journey continued. He achieved six aggregates at School Certificate level, received scholarship opportunities from universities in the United States, became largely self-taught across several fields, and went on to receive more than 30 national and international awards.

But the qualifications and awards were never the most important lesson.

The important lesson was that there is no single correct way to become capable.

Over the years, Ruddy began approaching education differently — publicly sharing methods, explaining examinations, breaking complex topics into understandable systems, experimenting with technology and asking a question traditional education does not ask often enough:

What if we built education around the student, instead of forcing every student to build themselves around the system?

That question is becoming ERB Academy.

ERB Academy recognises that the education system is far from perfect. Institutions can be slow to change. Curricula tell students what they must know, but too often nobody teaches them how to actually learn it, organise it, practise it, recover when they fall behind or connect their education to the life they want to build.

We want to work in that space.

Our job is not simply to teach you a syllabus.

We teach you what to learn, how to learn it and how to use it.

And ERB Academy is no longer being built by one person.

It is bringing together passionate people who see education differently — not simply teachers standing in front of students, but mentors students can recognise themselves in. People who can explain, challenge, listen, guide and understand that every student's journey looks different.

Because education should never become your entire identity.

Your examination results matter. Your education matters.

But they are tools.

Education does not decide your future. It gives you more options to build it.

That is the idea behind ERB Academy.

A platform that started with a few simple videos.

A teacher who started by helping his friends.

A student who had to discover his own way of learning.

And now, an academy being built so that the next student does not have to figure everything out alone.