In a glass-fronted building tucked away in east London, nine-year-olds are running an Airbnb, pricing up properties and fielding customer complaints. Upstairs, another group of children are plotting a mission to Mars, calculating fuel loads and debating the ethics of colonising another planet. This is not an after-school club or a tech summer camp, but the core curriculum of one of the capital’s newest schools. Blending entrepreneurship, project-based learning and real-world problem-solving, it is indeed challenging long-held assumptions about what – and how – children should be taught. As concerns mount that conventional classrooms are failing to prepare pupils for an uncertain future, this experimental institution is offering a glimpse of what education in London could look like tomorrow.
Inside the classroom where nine year olds run businesses and simulate space missions
In a light-filled room off a busy Hackney street, nine-year-olds are huddled around laptops, spreadsheets open, debating whether a £30 cleaning fee will scare off hypothetical guests from their mock Airbnb micro-enterprise. On the whiteboard, today’s agenda looks more like a start-up stand-up than a lesson plan: “Price strategy”, “Guest reviews”, “Profit vs. purpose”.Their teacher is less a traditional authority figure and more a facilitator, nudging pupils to justify decisions with data and to write persuasive listings that would not look out of place on an adult booking platform. Mistakes-like underpricing a weekend stay or forgetting to factor in laundry costs-aren’t marked in red; they become case studies for the next discussion. The room hums with the language of business, but behind every “cost-benefit analysis” is a literacy, numeracy and social skills lesson in disguise.
- Real client briefs embedded into literacy and maths
- Peer-led roles such as “finance lead” and “communications manager”
- Weekly mission logs that double as creative writing and science reports
- Live dashboards tracking bookings, budgets and “mission health”
| Role | Task | Skill Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Mission Commander | Set daily objectives | Leadership |
| Habitat Engineer | Design Mars base | STEM & creativity |
| Operations Officer | Budget supplies | Numeracy |
| Comms Specialist | Write status updates | Writing & clarity |
Next door, another class is deep into a weeks-long space mission scenario. Paper floor plans of a Mars habitat sprawl across tables, dotted with 3D-printed airlocks and solar panels. A “mission control” corner displays live readouts the children have invented-oxygen levels, food days remaining, crew morale-each tied back to core curriculum objectives. They calculate how many litres of water a crew would need for a month, then turn those numbers into graphs; they draft emergency protocols that double as comprehension exercises. The drama of a dust storm or a failing greenhouse is carefully scripted by teachers to introduce scientific concepts and ethical dilemmas: who gets the last seat on the escape pod, and how do you justify that choice in a written report? It’s play, but it’s also readiness-for critical thinking, negotiation and the calm, methodical problem-solving adults are usually expected to learn far too late.
How real world projects like managing an Airbnb are reshaping the primary school timetable
Rather of shuttling from maths to English in rigid 45‑minute blocks, pupils now move through a day shaped around running a fictional short‑let property: pricing rooms, calculating cleaning costs and writing persuasive descriptions that could sit on a real booking site. Teachers report that attendance spikes on “guest turnover” days, when children prepare digital welcome guides, draft house rules and even role‑play customer service calls. The timetable flexes to accommodate longer stretches of project work, with literacy, numeracy and computing threaded through one continuous narrative. Classrooms are reconfigured into mini “operations hubs”, and traditional worksheets give way to Kanban boards, shared Google Sheets and quick stand‑up briefings that mirror professional workplaces.
This shift is backed by a more agile daily structure, where subjects are batched around outcomes rather than exam topics. A mid‑morning block might combine data handling, art and geography as children analyze booking trends and design neighbourhood maps for potential guests. In the afternoon, critical thinking and PSHE come to the fore as pupils debate ethical questions around tourism, noise and community impact. To keep parents onside, the school publishes a simple breakdown of how the new schedule still covers – and frequently enough exceeds – national curriculum goals:
- Core skills are embedded in real tasks: every invoice, email and review response is a literacy or maths exercise.
- Timetabled “clinic” periods safeguard focused reading, phonics and times tables practice.
- Weekly reflection sessions encourage pupils to link project work to formal subjects.
| Time | Traditional | Project‑led |
|---|---|---|
| 09:00-10:00 | Maths lesson | Setting nightly rates & budgets |
| 10:15-11:15 | English comprehension | Writing listings & guest messages |
| 11:30-12:00 | Geography | Mapping local “attractions” |
What parents need to know about assessment, safety and screen time in this radical new model
At first glance, a timetable that includes “design a Mars habitat” and “run a mini-Airbnb” can sound like the wild west of schooling, but behind the novelty sits a surprisingly tight framework. Rather of traditional grades, children are tracked against clear skill benchmarks in problem-solving, interaction and digital literacy, with progress logged in live digital portfolios that parents can access any time. Teachers use frequent, low-stakes checks rather than high-pressure exams, and projects are broken into short “sprints” with feedback at each stage. That means a child’s ability to draft a guest welcome guide, pitch a mission budget or debug a simple app is assessed just as rigorously as spelling or fractions – only in far more realistic contexts.
Tech-heavy learning raises obvious questions about wellbeing. Devices are locked down with age-appropriate filters, pupils work on school-managed accounts rather than personal logins, and screen time is scheduled in blocks so it never dominates the day. Offline sessions for making, building and outdoor exploration are deliberately interwoven, and staff monitor both emotional and physical cues – from eye strain to social withdrawal – to spot overload early. For families, the school publishes a clear digital charter that covers:
- Daily screen-time limits by age group
- What platforms are used and how data is protected
- Non-negotiable rules on messaging, privacy and online conduct
| Age | Max school screen time | Main focus |
|---|---|---|
| 6-8 | 60-75 mins/day | Creativity & basics |
| 9-11 | 90 mins/day | Research & projects |
| 12-14 | 120 mins/day | Collaboration & coding |
Practical lessons traditional schools can borrow from Londons experiment in future focused learning
Classrooms still bound by exercise books and end-of-term tests can lift simple, concrete ideas from this radical London model without rebuilding their entire timetable. Project briefs modelled on running an Airbnb micro-business or planning a Mars mission can be dropped into existing subjects, turning abstract maths, geography and English into tangible problem-solving. Teachers can scaffold these with short, time-bound sprints, asking pupils to present to a “client” panel made up of staff, parents or local entrepreneurs, and to reflect on what went wrong and also what worked. Even a traditional timetable can accommodate one afternoon a week where pupils step into roles-data analyst, logistics lead, communications officer-so they practise professional collaboration, not just parallel solo work at the same desk.
Schools can also borrow the way this experiment foregrounds real-world skills without abandoning core knowledge. Simple tweaks include:
- Assessment that counts teamwork, initiative and iteration alongside test scores.
- Local partnerships with businesses, charities and councils to set authentic briefs.
- Cross-curricular themes where one project touches science, literacy, and citizenship.
- Student agency through choices in how to present findings-video, report, prototype.
| Traditional focus | Future-facing tweak |
|---|---|
| Worksheet on percentages | Price and profit on a mock rental listing |
| Essay on space facts | Risk brief for a Mars crew and budget summary |
| Group poster | Pitch to a panel with defined roles and feedback |
Future Outlook
As classrooms across the country grapple with how to prepare children for a rapidly changing world, this small London school is offering a glimpse of one possible future. By asking pupils to run an Airbnb or chart a course to Mars, it is betting that real-world problems and enterprising scenarios will build not just knowledge, but resilience, curiosity and collaboration.
Whether this model can scale beyond a single, experimental institution remains to be seen. But as parents, policymakers and educators weigh up what the next generation really needs from education, the lessons being learned here may prove hard to ignore.In a city long defined by its ability to reinvent itself, its schools may now be the ones leading the next reinvention.
