Rethinking School - The Unique

Week 15 - of our Rethinking Schools Series

In this our final post on Rethinking School and this week we are turning our attention to the last but not least groups that make up our community of home schoolers here at Orchard Training. For the purpose of this post, we’ll refer to them as “the unique.”

This category brings together several very different groups:

• The traveller community, whose work requires regular travel

• The Show Folk community, who work at festivals, steam fairs, and funfairs

• Learners competing in international sports

• Child actors and models

• Children of entrepreneurs

What these learners share is a lifestyle that makes traditional schooling difficult. This week, we’ll look more closely at each of these groups and discuss the strategies we use to support their education.

Travellers

Many of our parents come from the traveller community. Contrary to popular belief, they are not opposed to education. Rather, they reject the mainstream “product” of secondary schooling and the National Curriculum. Mainstream education is failing to deliver a "product" that the customer desires. If school is a 'business' then it is missing a huge market share here.

Children are often withdrawn around the transition to secondary school, commonly from Year 8 onwards. A major reason is that local schools are mixed-sex, which conflicts with traditional values where teenage boys and girls are educated separately. Concerns also arise around the National Curriculum’s approach to sex education; with many families preferring these topics be taught privately within the family and at the appropriate time.

Traditionally, boys learn trades from male relatives, while girls learn domestic and cultural skills from female relatives. Many traveller parents themselves had negative experiences at school, often linked to unaddressed learning differences such as dyslexia or ADHD, combined with a culture that values practical skills and work opportunities.

How We Do It Differently

Some families must travel for work, moving across the country for extended periods. For example, a family based in Surrey might temporarily relocate to Devon for work, keeping the family together while avoiding community disruption.

To support this lifestyle, we partner with primary schools with high traveller populations. The children remain registered with the school but receive lessons through our virtual classroom, with weekly progress reports shared with the headteacher. When families return home, children can slot back into their original school if places are available.

Secondary schools, however, are less flexible, so we often take teenagers on full-time. With them, we focus on preparing for Functional Skills or GCSEs in Maths and English, ensuring they have the qualifications needed for apprenticeships.

Show Folk

Festival-goers often enjoy the food, rides, and facilities run by the show folk community. Unlike travellers, they may not be away for long stretches, but schools are typically unwilling or unable to provide work in advance or support catch-up on return, largely due to staff workload.

How We Do It Differently

We deliver a 40-week programme that mirrors a school curriculum, with more intensive learning in the quieter winter months and a flexible approach during summer. Lessons are taught via our virtual classroom, with learners often logging on from cafes or service stations using free Wi-Fi. When Wi-Fi isn’t available, they work from prepared offline materials.

Because families follow the festival circuit, we plan around expected absences—encouraging extra work beforehand and offering catch-up lessons afterwards. This way, students stay aligned with their peers despite weeks on the road.

One memorable example was a GCSE Romeo and Juliet session at Reading Festival. Sitting on hay bales at the edge of the event, we read the play together—while passersby mistook our study group for another performance.

Sports Competitors

We support learners competing internationally in sports such as ice hockey, basketball, motorcycling, boxing, swimming, horse riding, gymnastics, and more. These families often struggle with schools refusing permission for absences—claiming “every lesson counts.” Yet lessons are freely missed for assemblies, productions, or when competing on behalf of the school. The difference is that schools support team events, but rarely individual athletes, even when they are training for world-class competitions or potential Olympic careers.

Models, Actors, and Ambassadors’ Children

Thanks to our proximity to film studios in Weybridge, Burwood, and Virginia Water, we often work with young actors and models temporarily based nearby. While their schools provide work packs, we step in to teach subjects requiring specialist input and report back to their schools.

Some learners need longer-term support. For example, one busy model joined our show folk programme, attending virtual lessons from a different country each week, with sessions adjusted for time zones. Another learner—owner of animals used in adverts, music videos, and YouTube events—faced resistance from her school about taking time off for shoots. Now homeschooled, she successfully balances her growing business with her studies.

International Summer School

Each summer, we also support children from overseas who must complete tasks or prepare for retakes before the new school year. In some countries, failing end-of-year exams means repeating the year. Our summer school provides tailored teaching, revision, and exam preparation, helping them progress when they return home.

Children of Entrepreneurs

Our final group includes the children of entrepreneurs whose parents’ businesses demand frequent travel across the UK and abroad. Examples include a mother managing a tile business traveling around the Mediterranean, another running spas in Dubai, Thailand, and Hong Kong, a parent rotating between ventures in Italy, France, Portugal, and England, and a single mother in the aeronautics industry who travels constantly and cannot leave her child at home.

Traditional schooling struggles to accommodate these lifestyles. Classrooms are designed around fixed schedules, consistent attendance, and a family model where one parent is always available for school runs and homework support. Extended absences, irregular routines, and the need for personalised learning simply don’t fit within this structure, leaving many children behind.

At Orchard Training, we adapt. Learning happens wherever families are—by a Portuguese pool, a farmhouse kitchen in New Zealand, a hotel foyer in South Carolina, a stadium in Vancouver, or even a van during deliveries. One learner once completed a maths lesson while lying in a newly delivered bath waiting to be installed. Another studied on Weymouth beach with fish and chips in hand.

Homeschooling is the preferred choice for our families, primarily due to the facts that boarding school is not an option and a strong desire to maintain family cohesion.

What matters is progress: students completing their work, contacting the teacher when needed, and taking responsibility for their learning. With our classroom open from early morning until late, weekdays and weekends, we make this possible.

Homeschooling – The Stories Behind the Choice

Over the past 14 weeks, we’ve been exploring the many factors that lead families to choose home education. We began by looking at the business of education — how funding, targets, and league tables influence decisions at every level. We then examined the role of education itself, questioning what school is for in today’s world and whether it’s meeting the needs of all learners.

We’ve considered what is being taught and why, alongside the pressure points of homework levels, timetables, and testing. We’ve also taken a close look at life inside school — from the everyday experience in the classroom to the very real impact of bullying.

Our focus has included the way schools support (or sometimes fail to support) learners with dyslexia, autism, and mental health needs, and how for some, these gaps make homeschooling a far more viable option. We’ve examined the plight of young carers, highlighting how caring responsibilities can make traditional schooling unmanageable. And we’ve acknowledged the unique circumstances — those situations that don’t fit neatly into categories but still shape the decision to home educate.

What’s becoming clear is that homeschooling isn’t simply a fallback option — for many, it’s a launchpad. Outside the constraints of traditional schooling, learners are able to follow their own interests, build practical skills, and gain confidence in ways that prepare them for work, entrepreneurship, and further study. Many are building successful lives without formal qualifications, proving that education is about much more than a set of exam results.

Together, these stories reveal that homeschooling is rarely just about “school avoidance.” For many, it’s a response to unmet needs, inaccessible systems, or life circumstances that mainstream schooling cannot currently accommodate.