School of Everything

Everyone has something to learn. Everyone has something to teach.

School of Everything is a website that helps people who want to learn meet up with people who want to teach. The award-winning site is free to join and is available worldwide.

Teachers register online and create a personal page giving information on their lessons, the qualifications offered and the format in which they teach - for example workshops or one-to-one sessions. Potential pupils find a tutor who's right for them simply searching by subject, learning category and location. They can then send them a message, arrange to meet and begin learning their new subject.

Some School of Everything teachers have left jobs in educational institutions because they've become fed up with the administrative burden. Others are 'pro-ams', people who have found a way to make a living from their hobbies and amateur passions. You can charge what you like for teaching, or share your skills for free - and unlike most schools, you can teach or learn whatever want (as long as it's legal).

The site you're looking at now launched on 1st September 2008, but the project has been in development for quite a while. The School of Everything Ltd was founded in September 2006 by a group of friends who wanted to reinvent education. We created it as a commercial web start-up because that seemed like the best way to reach the widest possible audience and create something which would have a lasting impact. We're still not quite sure how we've ended up running a business.

We were supported from the start by the Young Foundation, the charitable trust which carries on the work of Michael Young, founder of Which Magazine and the Open University. In February 2008 we took our first major round of investment in the form of £350,000 seed funding from Esther Dyson, Rocco Pellegrinelli, JP Rangaswami, the Young Foundation and Channel 4 Education.

Since then we've been steadily growing the community, received quite a bit of media attention, and won a New Statesman New Media Award and a UK catalyst Award for our evolving website. Now we have eight full-time staff plus various freelancers and advisors helping us out. We work in a nice yellow office in the Young Foundation in Bethnal Green, London, UK, where we're slowly learning how to do Everything properly.