Our Mission

Verstone Academy is a secular Classical education system designed to give children strong fundamentals in the topics of European History, Literature, Science, Engineering and the Skilled Trades. Our methodology is based on the principles of Classical education, with a particular focus on the first stage of the classical trivium: the Grammar Stage.

The Problem

Across the West, modern research has noticed a decline in reading ability, as well as a decline in ability for students to describe basic facts about our world. There is even an observable decline in intelligence itself; referred to as the Reverse Flynn Effect.

As our societies become more complicated and interdependent, we believe that a significant decline in competence poses a serious risk to the resilience of Europe and beyond. Proper education is a key pillar which can help ensure a brighter future for our children, particularly as people become more dependent upon technology and disconnected from their roots.

Verstone Academy is designed as a supplemental education system to ensure your child is not falling behind on the fundamentals in European History, Literature, Engineering and Skilled Trades. Our goal is to give children all the general knowledge they need in these topics so that they have the strong fundamentals which can be expanded upon later in their education into whatever domain they see fit.

By building competence, we build confidence. With a strong foundation, students will have a stronger sense of belonging about who they are and where they come from.

Classical Education: The Grammar Stage

Verstone Academy focuses on the first stage of the Classical Education trivium: the Grammar Stage. Typically for children ages 5 to 12, the Grammar stage focuses on building a strong knowledge base through the memorisation of fundamental facts and concepts. The early years represent a wonderful window of opportunity to build a foundation in this way, since children's brains are remarkably adapted towards absorption, memorisation and implicit learning. Unfortunately, this window of opportunity can also be missed to an extent: just think about how much more effortless it for people to learn a language if they are exposed to that language early!

Modern education has shifted its focus away from memorisation in the early years. However, by emphasizing memorisation early when the child's brain is most receptive, subject fundamentals become second nature. When fundamentals are second nature, you free up their mental bandwidth so that they are more effectively able to understand the world and solve logical problems later without being bogged down by cognitive overload. It is similar to how mental maths is much easier if you have your times tables memorised.

Our Ethos

Children aren't soulless computers. We don't just want them to memorize dry facts. We want to present the world in a living way which makes it exciting and fascinating to learn about. At Verstone Academy, we believe children are drawn towards beauty, and every effort has been made to ensure that our flashcards are aesthetic such that children are appealed by them.

Our flashcards feature famous paintings in the Public Domain for an aesthetic presentation. Including pictures and border art alongside the card text also helps to reinforce learning and memory.

Not only do children appreciate beauty; they also appreciate storytelling. By presenting history and other topics in active, colourful language with flavour text, we help reinforce their learning by imbuing it with memorable narrative. Our future products will use these cards as building blocks and integrate them into children's books for an interconnected and self-referencing education system.

Flashcard Design

The foundation of the Verstone education system are our flashcards. Each flashcard is treated as a building-block of knowledge. The flashcards topics have been hand-selected as fundamental knowledge for the the basis of a curriculum.

We have attempted to make the cards as brief as possible to capture key facts, but not so brief as to strip those facts of their context and colour. The cards are designed to be a student's first exposure to a topic, providing a high-level overview rather than excessive detail. It is expected that the topics will be circled back to and expanded upon in greater detail later in their education.

Certain vocabulary in the cards may be challenging for younger students, which is why it is recommended they learn alongside an adult, particularly for the early grammar stage. Learning this vocabulary is all part of the learning experience. We decided not to overly simplify the language so the cards maintain an enduring quality.

Learning Modes

Study mode is the core learning mode. It is an interactive mode that presents flashcards with selectively excluded information, training the student to recall the redacted information (ie. names, descriptions, dates). Currently, you just flip the card and see if you got the answer correct. Our future version will involve a self-scoring system that will show a card to you more or less frequently depending on how difficult it was to answer. (Note that for our history cards, we do not recommend for students to get overly bogged down by specific dates, as it is most important that they simply have a general idea of timelines.)

In Curriculum mode, cards are grouped together into decks which are presented in a logical progression for more structured and comprehensive learning via Study Mode. We recommend going through the decks in our suggested order, focusing primarily on name recall and description recall. We also recommend that the student master each topic thoroughly before moving onto the next topic.

Browse mode is a casual mode that allows students to enjoyably explore or search through all of our cards. Click a card to find out more information about it or to discover related cards. Note that for European History, the cards in browse mode are ordered chronologically by default.

Deck Builder allows you to make custom decks to personalise your learning experience.

Once completed, Our App will give you customised daily study sessions based on your preferred difficulty, settings and curriculum progress. It will be connected to the card's self-scoring system as to present the particular cards which the student finds most difficult.

How to Study

Note that the cards are initially designed to be done alongside an adult. We recommend short, focused sessions between 5 to 15 minutes per day alongside your student, as one of the most effective methods for memorization and learning is spaced repetition. Short consistent sessions are far more effective than longer, inconsistent ones. With learning, we believe that just 10 minutes a day consistently can make a big difference.

Finally, although the cards are designed primarily designed around the Grammar Stage, they certainly have value for students beyond the Grammar Stage as well. We believe that even the adults will learn a thing or two about the various topics while learning alongside their children and students!

Screen Time

At Verstone Academy, we understand the potential downsides associated with technology and excessive screen time. At the same time, we recognize the great potential that technology has to aid in learning. As such, our learning tools will be available in both physical and digital form. Physical form provides a great opportunity for children to learn hands-on, while our Digital app and website provide convenient features for easy studying and spaced repetition.

Future books will be available in physical form, integrated with QR codes to reference characters and/or event flashcards digitally via the app or website.