We’re parents of three boys. We homeschooled our eldest, Alex, for first grade. He did two to three hours of academics a day, and by the end of the year was working on third-grade math, language and reading. The challenge was filling the rest of the day. Without other kids around, he got bored, and using that time well became a big job for us.
Alex is now in a local primary school. He has friends and is happy, but academically he is mostly coasting through material he already knows. Having taught him for a year, we know he can learn faster. But we’re reluctant to spend precious after-school time keeping him ahead, especially since that doesn’t fix how his time in class is used.
School gives him other good things too: friends, more independence (he takes the bus home), and activities we couldn’t offer as homeschooling parents, like sports day. But overall, the trade feels marginal. We know things could be better.
We also have a clear picture of what we want our boys to be able to do: read and write well, swim, cycle and play the piano. Finding the time is hard. They’re at school until 2 or 3pm each day, leaving only a few hours for homework and other activities.
It’s also hard to know how best to help a child learn something. Alex plateaued at tennis even though he was spending a lot of time on it, and it took us a long time to fix. We tried several clinics to find one that fit his level, struggled to find a good coach, and had to rework his training schedule. Earlier advice from a good coach, or from parents a little further ahead, would have saved us a lot of time.
That’s what I’m building: a school with the personal attention and academic pace of homeschooling, the friends and community of a school, and the expertise of top coaches and educators. We haven’t found that in Singapore.
I went through Singapore’s top academic track: Henry Park, the Gifted Education Programme at Raffles Institution, and Raffles Junior College. I was stretched academically and did well, but even there, classes often moved slower than I could because teachers had to teach to the middle of the class. I also found interests outside school late, and it took me a long time to work out what I wanted to do and where I fit in. That’s why depth and agency matter to me.
I went to college in the US, started my career at Bain, then worked in growth and operations roles at tech companies in San Francisco, most recently leading operations at Protocol Labs. These days I’m researching what works in education and writing about it at curiositylabs.com.
I’m not a career educator. The school will be led by an experienced principal, who will be responsible for teaching and learning. My role will be the school’s design, technology and operations, and staying in close touch with parents about how well it’s working for their children.
Most of all, we’re parents who care deeply about our children and believe school can do better for children like ours.