Eight boys at an all-boys school in England are the top students and want to get into Oxford. Their prep school knows that by getting them into the best colleges the prep school will look good. So the school is willing to employ a new teacher Irwin (Stephen Campbell Moore) to give them special tutoring. His methods are unusual and a bit controversial. The boys still prefer the traditional teaching methods of their English teacher Hector (Richard Griffiths). The two teachers compete for the boy's attention not only in education but from the vantage of their unexplored homosexuality. This tension envelops the students and their teachers in a struggle to learn about life as well as history and literature. Yet it is in history and literature that they find the answers they seek.