Odyssey
The Journey is Everything

Putting pupils at the heart of everything we do

Odyssey House School was created for pupils who need a bespoke, holistic and therapeutic education approach to help them learn and grow successfully. We are also able to support pupils who may have an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP).

We offer a small, nurturing education experience, tailored to the unique needs of every child, and designed to support pupils who struggle in mainstream schools. This is true for increasing numbers of children and young people. For them, large education environments, big group sizes and results-focused curriculum delivery are counter-productive to creating a nurturing and personalised learning environment. These children and young people are often – wrongly – labelled as underachievers, and they are treated as problems to be managed instead of unique individuals to be understood.

Charu Kashyap and Shilpa Walia, who founded and continue to lead the Odyssey Education Journey, knew it didn’t have to be that way. Together with Judith Charlesworth, who remains in an independent governance role in the school, they decided to do something. Their idea was simple: to create a safe, nurturing school environment where education is tailored around the needs of each child. They wanted to ensure smaller classes to allow for more personalised teaching and to design a curriculum engaging enough to inspire, but flexible enough to meet the needs of every child.

After years of hard work and dedication, and having assembled a team of passionate and like-minded people, Odyssey House School opened its doors for the first time in 2019. We started out with our first school in Highgate, North London, before opening the two schools we have today – our Bloomsbury School in Central London and our Wokingham School.

The Journey Is Everything