One email a week: something from which I hope you'll get real value. We talk about things we can build, and how to defend them. That can apply to cybersecurity, physical buildings, digital products, and .... just about anything. The two concepts matter for progress, both as individuals and as a society.
Today’s topic is: home education.
We've been home educating our son for about three years now. He, at eleven, is about 75% through pre-algebra. In the normal sequence, that is a subject many children do not properly begin until thirteen. He may finish it in about three months.
This is not a humblebrag disguised as a maths problem. (Anyone who knows me knows that I do not disguise my bragging behind humility. It's an indication that things can be done differently, and often better. If he were in a "proper" school, he'd be in year seven in the British system, and in sixth grade in the American system. A year group is a useful administrative itool, as it helps a school put thirty children and one adult in a room, ring a bell at sensible intervals, and make sure nobody accidentally studies trigonometry before they have learned long division. Fair enoughi, f you're a Prussian child whose parents are still smarting at their defeat by Napoleon. Perhaps not so much if you live in the Information Age.
One child may be ready to sprint through algebra and need a little more time to write an essay. Another may read Dickens at ten and still find fractions deeply suspicious. A third may learn more history from walking around a city, asking questions, and reading the plaque outside an old building than from an exercise book called The Tudors: Unit 4.
Home education is not the claim that parents are automatically better teachers than teachers. Although, they will certainly have a higher interest in their own child and likely more time to spend 1-1.
A family can build a learning environment around the actual child, use specialists when the subject gets bigger than the parent, and stop treating the school timetable as the only possible operating system for childhood. More importantly, it gives everyone in the family a level of freedom that would be hitherto unknown. (Did you just say "hitherto unknown"?) (Bonus points if you can name the movie for the quote.)
🔨 BUILD: Build & Defend Home Education
The useful first distinction is this: home education does not mean reproducing school at the kitchen table, complete with a bell, a uniform, and somebody pretending that the printer works. No one will be clapping any erasers either, because again, it's not 1983.
It means you as parents taking responsibility for the child’s education. (As a quick note, not every jurisdiction on earth allows home education, so you'll have to check based on where you live.,) Your child's education can include books, online courses, tutors, co-ops, sport, museums, language lessons, coding clubs, music teachers, libraries, travel, projects, apprenticeships, and, occasionally, an actual worksheet. The family chooses the mix.
How to do it without building a tiny Department for Education
Start with the child, not the curriculum catalogue.
Make a one-page learning map:
What is already going well? Our child is moving quickly in maths, so the job is not to slow him down until the calendar says he is allowed to continue.
Where are the gaps? Writing, spelling, presentation, handwriting, attention, confidence, or a subject that has simply not clicked yet.
What does the child enjoy enough to work hard at? This is not fluff. Interest is fuel.
What real-world experiences would make the subject stick? A budget for maths. A museum for history. Cooking for chemistry. A small website for writing and design.
What needs a proper specialist? You do not need to become a Mandarin teacher, a violinist, or a mathematician with a PhD in number theory. You need to know when to bring one in.
Then choose a minimum viable week. For an eleven-year-old, that might be a daily block for maths and literacy, several shorter blocks for science, history, languages, and projects, regular physical activity, and scheduled time with other children. It does not have to look like school. It does have to on purpose.
The key advantage is pace. If a child has understood the lesson, they can continue. If they have not, they can stay with it without becoming “behind” in front of twenty-nine other children.
What technology changes
The web turned a family into a library card with Wi-Fi. AI has made it feel more like a small tutorial college, provided you remember that the very confident robot can still get the answer wrong.
A good use of technology is narrow and supervised:
an adaptive maths platform that finds what a child knows and what they missed;
a language app for short, regular practice;
a live tutor for the hard bits;
a writing tool that gives feedback on a draft, not a machine that writes the essay;
a parent dashboard or simple spreadsheet that records progress without turning childhood into Salesforce;
AI as a patient explanation machine, quiz partner, or lesson-planning assistant, never as an unaccountable teacher.
Math Academy, for example, is designed for self-paced mathematics and provides a progress view that a parent or tutor can share. Khan Academy offers free practice and lessons across maths, grammar, science, history, and more. These do not remove the parent from the picture. They remove some of the drudgery and make it easier to see what needs attention.
Tutors are now a normal part of the stack
The old model was: find the one local tutor whose number someone’s cousin has saved from 2008, hope they have a slot on Thursday at 7:30pm, and drive across town in traffic.
Now a good tutor can be anywhere. Live video, shared whiteboards, recorded sessions, online academies, specialist communities, and review sites mean a child can find someone who genuinely enjoys the thing they need help with. That matters most when a child goes beyond the parent’s confidence.
A tutor’s role is not necessarily to take over. It can be to keep standards high, teach the difficult material, give the child another trusted adult to learn from, and stop Mum or Dad becoming both teacher and the person who says it is time to tidy the bedroom.
Worldschooling: the world becomes part of the curriculum
For families who can travel, worldschooling is not a year-long holiday with a workbook thrown in next to the pool. It is place-based learning: living somewhere long enough to understand a little of its language, history, food, geography, institutions, and people.
A week in Rome can be a lovely holiday. A month with a child reading about the Republic, standing in the Forum, taking public transport, ordering food, doing a budget, and making friends is an education with more moving parts.
Boundless Life is one example of a structured worldschooling provider. Its World School Year combines education, furnished homes, co-working for parents, and community across several destinations; families should still examine the actual curriculum, cost, accreditation, and whether the model fits their child before booking anything. (Note, we're signed up for Japan next year!)
The point is not that every child needs to live out of a suitcase. The point is that learning can happen in a wider world than a classroom. (If you want to take this to an interesting conclusion - you can do world schooling, which is often three months per instance - four times per year. You would then not live in any one place in particular, and at that point, you would likely not have any specific tax jurisdiction per se, as you'd only be in a given country for roughly 90 days at a time. Makes whether or not you pay taxes to any particular place a much more interesting exercise.)
🛡️ DEFEND: Defend the Child, Not the Argument
Home education attracts rumours, often from people who imagine it as one exhausted parent, a dining-table disaster zone, and a child who has never met another human being except the Amazon delivery driver.
Some home education is poorly planned. Some schools are brilliant. Some families should not homeschool. All of those things can be true at once.
The sensible case is not “home education always wins.” It is “a thoughtful, resourced, accountable version can work extremely well for some children and families.”
Children need friends, collaboration, disagreement, sport, group projects, adults other than their parents, and the chance to be occasionally annoyed by someone roughly their own age. They do not necessarily need seven hours a day with exactly the same age cohort to get those things.
The socialisation question is real, but the rumours that home educated children don't develop social skills is way overblown. The question of whether children interact needs a better answer than “they see people at school.” Build social contact deliberately: a weekly co-op, team sport, Scouts or Guides, arts, a coding club, language classes, volunteering, cousins, neighbours, travel, and unstructured play. Put it in the calendar with the same seriousness as maths. When we started home education when we lived in London, we simply took him to the same playground he used to go to after school let out - when school let out. He played with the same kids at the same times, but he just didn't sit with them for lessons all day. Now that we live in Dubai, he has a numb er of friends - of different ages - that he plays with on a regular basis. (And since Dubai is so safe, he can just go and do that whenever, after those kids are home from school.)
The research does not justify the sweeping claim that home-educated children are not well adjusted. A major 2020 survey of the literature found that homeschoolers generally compared favourably with conventionally schooled peers across the social skills studied, while also warning that much of the evidence uses non-random and self-reported samples. A 2022 review reaches the cautious version: early evidence suggests equal or better socio-emotional functioning, but selection effects make firm causal claims premature.
That is the grown-up answer. No panic. No victory lap. Socialisation is not automatic in either setting. It is a design requirement.
Rumour: “Parents are not qualified teachers”
Parents should not bluff their way through subjects they do not understand. But qualification is not the only ingredient in education.
A parent can provide attention, feedback, routines, reading, curiosity, safety, and the all-important ability to notice when a child is pretending to understand fractions because they would rather be playing Minecraft. Specialists can teach the specialist material. The web makes finding them way easier than it used to be.
The job is not to know everything. It is to build a system that knows where to get help.
Rumour: “Home-educated children always do better”
Also not true, at least not in the clean, causal way Instagram graphics tend to suggest.
A 2017 systematic review reported positive academic results for home-educated students in 11 of 14 peer-reviewed studies and positive social-development findings in 13 of 15. But the better independent reviews explain why we should not turn those numbers into a bumper sticker: many studies use volunteers, small samples, parent reports, and families who already have high levels of education, money, time, and involvement.
So the defensible claim is stronger than “it might work” and weaker than “it's magic”. Home education is associated with good outcomes in much of the available research. The evidence does not yet prove that moving any child from school to home will cause better results.
That distinction matters because it points to the thing worth copying: individual attention, a coherent curriculum, strong relationships, proper assessment, and purposeful social life.
The second-job question
This part needs honesty too. A parent leaving paid work to educate a child is a serious financial decision. It can reduce income, pension contributions, career momentum, and household resilience. It may be impossible for many families, and nobody should be made to feel guilty about that.
But “a second income is always obviously worth more than a parent’s time with their child” is not a neutral fact. It is a value judgement wearing a spreadsheet costume.
For some families, paying for school fees, wraparound care, transport, tutoring, activities, and the general expensive machinery of two full-time jobs means the difference is less dramatic than it first appears. For others, the second income is essential. The calculation is personal.
The better question is: what are we buying with the arrangement we have now, and what are we giving up?
A parent’s time can produce education, confidence, family life, flexible travel, a calmer routine, and unusually good knowledge of their child. It can also produce stress, isolation, and financial pressure if the plan is not viable. Build the case on your household’s real numbers, not someone else’s manifesto.
💰 STACK: The Smallest Useful Home-Education Setup
You do not need a Victorian schoolroom, an enormous library, or a parent who can recite the periodic table backwards. Start boring:
A legal and administrative check: rules vary by country, emirate, passport, school system, and future education plan. Check the rules that apply to your family before changing enrolment. This newsletter is not legal advice, unfortunately. I am ont a lawayer and I don't play one on TV either.
A learning map: one page per child covering current level, goals, interests, gaps, and evidence of progress.
A core maths path: use a placement test and let the child work at the level they have earned, not merely the level printed on their birthday cake. Math Academy, Singapore Math, and Khan Academy are useful options for different needs. For unusually maths-hungry children, AoPS adds a rigorous problem-solving track.
A literacy habit: daily reading, read-aloud time even for older children, regular writing, spelling/grammar feedback, and one longer piece of writing each week. Use a library aggressively. It is still one of the best subscriptions in civilisation, especially as it's often free.
A history and science spine: a coherent sequence matters more than trying to learn every interesting fact from the internet. OER Project offers free history courses and materials; combine it with museums, documentaries, primary sources, and local places.
A tutor budget: reserve money for the subjects where expertise, accountability, or a different voice will help.
A social calendar: one recurring group activity, one physical activity, and one mixed-age community activity every week is a much better plan than “we will probably meet people somehow.”
A portfolio: keep samples of work, reading lists, projects, assessments, photos, certificates, and reflections. It is useful for the child, for parents, and for any future school, university, or suspicious relative who asks whether learning is “really happening.”
🔗 LINKS
Math Academy
A self-paced maths platform with diagnostic assessment and progress oversight.
Singapore Math
A structured primary maths approach built around conceptual understanding and procedural fluency.
Art of Problem Solving / Beast Academy
Rigorous problem-solving mathematics, online classes, books, and courses for motivated learners.
Khan Academy
Free maths, grammar, science, history, computing, and life-skills materials.
OER Project
Free history resources, including Big History and World History.
Duolingo
Short, gamified language practice.
Pimsleur
Audio-led language learning, particularly useful for listening and speaking habits.
Praktika
AI-supported language speaking practice. Verify feedback and keep real human conversation in the mix.
Boundless Life
A structured worldschooling option combining education, accommodation, coworking, and community.
💬 ONE THING
Do not announce that you are changing your child’s entire education next Tuesday.
Instead, do one home-education experiment this week:
Choose one subject your child loves or is unusually ready for.
Find a proper placement test or introductory lesson.
Give them two uninterrupted sessions.
Ask what was easy, what was hard, and what they would like to learn next.
You are not trying to win an argument with the school system.
You are trying to see the child in front of you clearly enough to help them grow.
Thanks for reading this newsletter! Feel free to respond any time.
Thomas
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