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About Us

What is The Grown-Up School? 🎓

Life skills shape outcomes — yet most people are never formally taught them.

Across the UK, the majority of people leave full-time education without feeling prepared for adult life. Research shows that 87% of British adults do not believe school equipped them with the life skills they needed — skills such as managing money, navigating work, maintaining wellbeing, or understanding housing and relationships.

The consequences are visible everywhere: financial stress, poor mental health, limited career confidence, and young people feeling overwhelmed by adult responsibilities long before they are supported to manage them.

The Grown-Up School exists to close that gap.

We are an education organisation dedicated to making essential life skills free, practical, and accessible — for students, schools, and the wider public.

What we do 👩‍🏫

1. We create free life skills content ✍️

We run the UK’s free online guide to growing up:
“How to Grow Up” 📚

It’s a practical survival guide for real life — written in plain English, without judgement or jargon.

Our free lessons cover:

  • Money & financial confidence 💷
  • Careers & work 💼
  • Relationships & communication 🤝
  • Wellbeing & mental health 🧠
  • Housing & independent living 🏡
  • Student life & transitions 🎓

We’ve published 200+ free lessons — enough content to fill several books — so that no one is locked out of learning how adult life works.

2. We support schools 🏫

Teacher support 💖

We understand the challenges teachers face in preparing students for life beyond the classroom. That’s why we offer free resources, advice, and support to educators.

Our aim is to enhance life skills education, making it easier for teachers to incorporate essential lessons into their curriculum.

Teachers looking for support are welcome to get in touch!

3. We solve the life skills gap 🩹

Whether it’s writing a national life skills curriculum for the UK, delivering workshops UK-wide, or developing a national TV series, we’re on a mission to close the life skills gap.

Why we started 💖

No matter what age you are, growing up is scary.

One minute you’re having fun in school..

..the next you’re expected to understand everything from tax and mortgages, to health care and politics!

The Grown-Up School makes “adulting lessons” free and accessible for all..

..so that everyone has an equal opportunity to become a successful grown-up. 💖

Laura Abraham

Founder

Did you know?

Research has shown that:

87% of British people don’t feel like they were adequately prepared for life as an adult, — saying they weren’t taught the life skills they needed before leaving full-time education. (Metro News)


These are things like:

  • managing money💸
  • understanding relationships 🤝
  • preparing for a career 💼
  • looking after our wellbeing 🧠
  • getting and looking after a home… 🏡

… things that have a huge bearing on someone’s potential for success in life.

Why don’t people learn life skills?

There are 2 main places where people typically learn life skills:

Schools🧑‍🏫

Life skills are not always covered by schools, and education systems worldwide are experiencing intense pressure following the Covid-19 pandemic.

This is changing, however there are generations of people who may have missed out on the opportunity to learn grown-up skills.

According to CBI, about 1 in 4 young adults don’t feel prepared by education for the world of work, let alone the world itself.

Parents/Guardians 👪

Surveys have also shown that nearly half of parents don’t feel equipped to teach their children important life skills.


There are also:

  • 2.9 million single parent families in the UK,
  • 80,000 children in care,
  • 14.5 million people in poverty,
  • and an estimated 8.3 million people already struggling with debt.

Should we rely on parents to “just know” how to teach life skills? 🤷‍♀️

Or should we expect a strained education system to change things? 😟


I don’t think so.


This is why during the Covid-19 pandemic I quit my career in finance (looking after a £7.6 billion savings portfolio) to follow my passion – teaching people grown-up skills.


To date I’ve taught life skills in schools to 1000s of young people in the highest areas of poverty in the UK, and now I’m reaching a global audience.

I have created an open-access online resource that aims to help anyone and everyone to feel more prepared for grown-up life.

I hope you’ll join me in spreading awareness of the free help offered by The Grown-Up School, by telling people to “Grow up!” 😉

Laura x

🎓

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