Relationships front and centre

A visit to Nisai, and what it taught me about online learning done well

I had the joy of visiting Nisai’s main UK office today.

For those who don’t know Nisai, it’s an online learning provider, but that doesn’t really cover it. It’s a school engaged in deeply relational work with children who may struggle to attend a traditional setting. And what I saw today reminded me why the labels we use for schools so often fail to capture what actually happens inside them.

I met with a range of staff who told me about their mentoring programmes, and I had the chance to observe lessons. The first was maths, paced and sequenced so that engagement felt natural. There was plenty of modelling and scaffolding, with the teacher checking in often and giving children space to think aloud. I then moved into an English lesson, where young people were being prepared for their exam. A gentle pace, careful questioning, and a clear sense that the children in the room were known.

I said to Dhruv, the founder of Nisai, that for me one of the markers of a good school is a simple one. Would I be happy for my own child to attend? The honest answer is yes. And more than that, I think she would thrive there.

What struck me most was how visibly relational the work is. Online education is often imagined as cold or transactional, something to be tolerated rather than enjoyed. What I saw was the opposite. Children were greeted by name, encouraged, gently challenged. The mentoring sits alongside the academic work rather than being bolted on, and that matters enormously for the cohort Nisai serves. So many of these young people have experienced education as something that happened to them, rather than with them. Here, the relationship comes first, and the learning follows.

There is something quietly radical about a school that takes belonging seriously for the children who have most often been told, implicitly or otherwise, that they don’t quite fit. Nisai isn’t trying to replicate a mainstream classroom on a screen. It’s doing something different, and it’s doing it with care.

I left thinking about how often we talk about online learning as a compromise, a fallback, a second best. It isn’t, and it doesn’t have to be. When the relationship comes first, learning becomes possible in places we hadn’t imagined.

A huge thank you to Dhruv and his team for being so welcoming