An Okehampton couple have set up a new learning centre as an alternative to the local schools after feeling their own children were failed by the system.

Dan Rose and Teresa Broadbridge opened the You Learning Centre in September after they decided to pull their twins out of school, as their daughter had been suffering with severe school anxiety and their son had fallen “under the radar.”

However, they failed to find a suitable homeschooling provision and, after hearing about other families in similar situations, established their own centre to provide an alternative setting for local children struggling in a traditional classroom.

They have set up the centre in a unit on the Fatherford Farm estate on the outskirts of Okehampton.

Dan said: “We had this space and we stood there and went: ‘Shall we build one? Shall we do this?’ I went: ‘Yeah, go on, then.’ We built all this, just the two of us.”

What followed was a hard month’s work to get the centre up and running as soon as possible for those children “let down elsewhere, and by the system.”

Teresa said: “We wanted to get it done. We pushed ourselves quite hard. We were here until ten at night, sometimes later.”

The homeschooling centre caters for children aged 11 to 16 and focuses on teaching functional skills – a recognised qualification – as well as life skills to prepare them for apprenticeships and the workplace.

Qualified teachers focus on maths and English in the morning and lead ‘child-led’ sessions in the afternoon, alongside Dan and Teresa.

Lessons have included traditional subjects as well as practical activities such as electronics, cooking and pottery. Police, search and rescue volunteers and a self-defence instructor have also visited the centre to work with the children.

Describing the modern school environment as “suppressing,” Dan and Teresa have taken a different approach, allowing the children to move about, chat and use their phones for work during lessons.

Teresa added: “It’s just a suppressing environment now and it’s not preparing children for the world. You’ve got too many kids that are coming out of school with anxiety and basically not in education or training.

“If a child fidgets here, they’ve got the freedom to get up, go to the toilet, go make themselves a drink and come back, and we get so much more out of them because they’re not suppressed.”

In fact, Dan and Teresa said they have seen a massive improvement in all the children’s confidence, social skills, real-world experience and behaviour. Their son no longer spends all his free time playing video games; another teenager now feels confident enough to spend time away from his parents, and two “shy” girls are set to attend equestrian college this coming September.

“This is why we do it,” said Dan. “We don’t do it for the money.”

Dan and Teresa are currently covering most of the centre's costs themselves, as there is no government funding scheme for homeschooling and the centre is not eligible to apply for grants from local charitable organisations such as Okehampton United Charities. As a result, parents currently need to pay a fee, but once the centre has been running for a year, it will be eligible for additional grants, and Dan and Teresa will be able to reduce costs for parents.