Opening September 2026 | Near Bath
Meridian blends academic rigour, real-world learning and emotional intelligence. We design learning around how humans actually learn, and prepare young people not only for exams, but for life. Here, children fall in love with learning again and are amazed by what they can do.
Behind Meridian: an educational neuroscientist who built a STEM Prep School of the Year science department and won a She Inspires award for bringing learning science into disadvantaged schools — and a co-founder who has spent 25 years building schools, charities and coaching programmes around the world.
NEAR BATH · STARTING YEARS 6–9; EXPANDING EACH YEAR
Our Mission
Meridian is a pioneering, premium independent learning community, opening with Years 6 to 9 and expanding each September, with an intentionally small founding cohort of just eight to ten children.
We prepare children for the real world by designing a learning environment that resembles it. Learning here is always connected to something that matters: a real audience, a real outcome, a real purpose. We don't end our learning with worksheets; we learn in order to publish, exhibit, design, build, create, plan and make, building a learning passport for life.
The result is a community that unlocks academic confidence, develops genuine passions, and builds the grit and self-knowledge children need to navigate whatever future they choose. Relevant, exciting and deeply practical.
Students take ownership of their learning, their choices, and ultimately their lives, guided by coaches who know and believe in them.
Academic excellence achieved through deep understanding, not memorisation. Students learn to think. Not just to perform. When they achieve mastery, children become teachers themselves.
Learning is connected to the real world from the start. Young people discover who they are, what matters to them, and where they want to go. Learning is relevant, so intrinsic motivation is fostered.
A warm, human-scale community where every student is truly known, and every family is a genuine partner in their child's journey.
Our Approach
Everything we do is shaped by how children's brains actually learn, building in movement, emotional safety, and social connection before academic content.
Students learn deeply and think critically. We use AI, coaching and peer-teaching to accelerate academic progress and free up time for richer experiences.
Termly projects (from running restaurants to making stop frame animations) put real skills into real practice, with real audiences and real stakes.
Children learn to manage themselves, collaborate, and lead their own learning, building the self-efficacy to thrive in whatever future they choose. Repeatedly, research shows that emotional intelligence is a far more accurate predictor of career success than grades: to us, it is as important as academics.
Students discover what fascinates them through coaching, deep internships and learner-selected experiences, building a life, not just a CV.
Families are central to life at Meridian: contributing expertise to projects, attending termly exhibitions, and engaged in their child's learning journey throughout.
Our World
From day one, Meridian children learn in connection with the wider world. We are building partnerships with organisations that share our belief in whole-child, real-world education.
Led by a Bath-based expert with decades as Head of Sport, our partnership brings deep knowledge, genuine wisdom, and a gift for nurturing a love of movement in young people. We are as innovative in our approach to physical movement as we are to academic learning. We will learn about physical movement through parkour, biking and dance, as well as traditional sports.
Our partnership with The Egg Theatre brings performing arts to life through professional actors, artists and producers. Performance and storytelling are woven into the heart of everything we do.
In partnership with Jamie's Farm, we share a conviction that children need hands-on experience of land, animals, food and sustainability — and a felt sense of the rhythms of the natural world.
Partnerships with Learnus and the Centre for Educational Neuroscience keep our practice at the frontier of learning science. We will codify and share what we discover with the wider research community.
A local self-esteem charity and a network of progressive regional schools extend our children's world and reinforce our commitment to confidence, connection and collaboration. We are delighted to have a home in the Deeper Learning Network, where pioneering schools and universities share and promote deeper learning practice across the UK.
The Shift
| Conventional schools | Meridian |
|---|---|
| Teaches the curriculum | Teaches the child |
| Subject silos | Project-based learning with the real world as our canvas |
| Fragmented timetables | Deep learning blocks for sustained focus and flow |
| Behaviour management | Character development |
| Pressure to motivate: use of external rewards and punishments | Children learn because they want to. Full stop. |
| Teachers teach students | Students become teachers too |
What Parents Tell Us
Before we designed a single lesson, we asked parents across SW England what they really wanted for their children. This is what they said.
"Set children up for life, not just university. Match passion with real-world competence. We just don't want our children defined by their exam grades anymore."
Parents of children aged 4, 8 and 11, at independent school, SW England"Wouldn't it be so much better if learning was constructed around the individual child, not the identikit approach?"
Family in Bath, SW England"Make it joyful, playful. None of my children are keen to go to school — let's change that."
Parents of children aged 7, 10, 11 and 13, independent school in Bath, SW EnglandWhy Now
The world young people are growing up into is changing faster than at any point in living memory. AI is reshaping work and creativity. The skills that matter most (adaptability, collaboration, critical thinking, emotional intelligence) are not the skills most schools currently prioritise. Companies like the 'Big Four' have eased their traditional academic requirements, focusing more on skills and widening access. In recent years, many have replaced degree criteria with bespoke assessments and contextual hiring methods. Ernst & Young and PwC have removed degree classifications and UCAS points altogether.
We saw this not as a crisis, but as an extraordinary opportunity. To build something new from the ground up. To design a learning community with the future in mind, rooted in the science of how children actually learn, and shaped by what families genuinely need.
Meridian is that community. And we're building it now, with the families who believe in it alongside us.
Evidence It Works
Schools around the world, including High Tech High, XP School and EL Education, have shown a project-based, high-agency model works. Our approach draws on their findings, and credible educational, neuroscientific and psychological research.
months of additional reading progress in project-based schools
months of additional maths progress in project-based schools
percentile points of socio-emotional gain through a coaching-based approach
Get In Touch
Our founding cohort is taking shape, with doors opening in September 2026. Whether you'd like to enquire about a place, join our waiting list, attend an upcoming event, or find out more about the community we're building – we'd love to hear from you.
Meridian operates as a part-time home education provision. Parents retain responsibility for their child's education.