About Us

Between us we have been involved with the schooling system for around 50 years, either as students, parents of students, and even taking gap years as teaching assistants.

Some experiences have been better than others, but they have all shown the same overriding theme which is that school does not prepare our children for real life.

Schools can be great for preparing for a test of knowledge; however, we soon realise that these same tests have not properly prepared us for life out in the real world.

As Darrell Hammond once said ‘We are raising today’s children in sterile, risk-averse and highly structured environments. In so doing, we are failing to cultivate artists, pioneers and entrepreneurs, and instead cultivating a generation of children who can follow the rules in organised sports games, sit for hours in front of a screen and mark bubbles on standardised tests.’

How many of these tests prepare us for the ugliness of the online world and the bombardment of scam phone calls and emails? For the bitterness of online trolls constantly trying to tear down self-esteem? How many tests prepare us for living within our means, not stressing about what other people appear to have because the reality of someone’s life tend to bear no resemblance to the one shown online?

The world has changed, from the way that we interact with each other, to way that we receive information, and yet, the school system has not changed with it. These thoughts sent us on a journey of research and discovery and ultimately to the destination of our education platform.

Concentration Spans

A child’s concentration span is between 2 and 3 times their age, so how can we expect, say, a 7-year-old child to focus for 30 minutes per topic while seated in a classroom? Children are bombarded with new information at all times throughout the day as almost everything they do and see is new for them, which in turn reduces their focus on one topic.

As adults, we are fully aware of how easily we ‘zone out’ when someone is talking to us, because something has distracted us, or the topic of conversation is not something that is of interest, or because have somewhere else we need to be, or simply because another thought has popped into our heads. As adults, we have no problem asking for something to be repeated because we missed it for whatever reason, however, as a child in class, the chances of that happening are very small.

Personal experience has shown that there are times when we have completely missed learning something at school, either because we were off sick that day, or a bird flew passed the window and our attention turned to that instead or for a myriad of other reason.

More often than not, the opportunity to learn that particular something has now also passed, and this gap is overlooked because you don’t need to score 100% in order to pass a test. This gap only becomes important when we realise that perhaps we have missed a stepping stone which may now inhibit us moving on to the next one.

Conclusion

Based on this knowledge and experience, and our decision to home educate our own children, we embarked on building a platform that has the national curriculum available in very short videos that any learner should be able to focus on from start to finish.

If a concept is not grasped, there is no fear of failure as the video can be rewatched as many times as needed. Knowledge can be gained at a pace that suits the learner and there is no need to either be rushed through a subject or held back if a particular subject is difficult.

In addition to the videos, we have prepared some activities to help solidify the information in a way that is not simply homework, as well as knowledge tests to see how well the subject is known.

Over and above the national curriculum, we have produced fun fact videos for various subjects in the hopes that these will spark an interest where perhaps there wasn’t one.

There is also a projects section with ideas to keep children busy and learning in ways that don’t feel like learning.

To round it all off, there is a life skills section which simply offers advice on age-appropriate life skills for children to learn that will help them grow into well rounded adults.

We hope that this will help anyone facilitate their own child’s learning journey so that they can pass their GCSE’s, should they decide to write them.

This platform will continue to grow even further with courses to help all those that have left the comfort of their parent’s home, and even those trying to run their own homes and are wanting to make changes in their lives.

This is a journey, and we really welcome anyone who wants to join us on it.