When we say that education should be free, people often respond with a fair question: free of what? Because the fee on the invoice is only one of the ways learning can cost something.
There is the cost of getting there. A school can charge nothing and still be out of reach if reaching it takes two hours of walking or a transport fare the family cannot spare.
There is the cost of materials. Uniforms, books, stationery, printing. Each one is small, but together they decide who shows up equipped and who shows up embarrassed.
There is the cost of time. A student who must work, or care for siblings, or fetch water, has fewer free hours than a classmate. A timetable that assumes everyone is available at the same time quietly excludes them.
There is the cost of confidence. A student who is behind, or older than their classmates, may pay in embarrassment every single day. That price is rarely written down, yet it drives a great many people out of classrooms.
And there is the cost of data and devices for online learning. We take this one seriously, because we are building an online school. A lesson that cannot be loaded on a small phone with limited data is not really free.
This is why we design the way we do. We keep lessons short so they are cheap to open and easy to fit into a spare half hour. We make them repeatable, so a student can come back when it suits them. We avoid forcing anyone into a fixed schedule. And we want students to feel welcome whatever their age or their past.
Free is not a slogan for us. It is a long list of small, practical decisions about how to remove each cost in turn. We will not get all of them right the first time. But we think that is the honest way to take the word seriously.