Fed up of her daughter coming home uninspired and flat – this mum decided she was going to teach her daughter with the help of an AI bot, in a bid to turn her into a successful business owner
15:11, 11 May 2026Updated 15:12, 11 May 2026
Kate decided to take her daughter Niyah out of school over fears that was losing her creativity(Image: Kate Bell)
A tech-savvy mum has ditched the classroom and replaced her daughter’s teachers with a bespoke AI bot she built herself.
Software developer Kate Bell took the step after finding that the traditional education system was causing the “light to fade” in her creative 13-year-old daughter, Niyah.
Niyah has now ditched the national curriculum and is being mentored by an AI platform, which aims to turn her into a successful business owner before she even turns 18.
Kate, a business owner from Hampshire says she can programme it to teach her daughter more life skills than what she would have learnt at primary or secondary school. Now, she hopes her daughter follows in her footsteps and becomes a business owner before she’s reached adulthood.
READ MORE: ‘Hunger doesn’t stop at 11!’ Call for free breakfast for teenagers as UK feels the pinch
Kate and Niyah spend their days working alongside each other(Image: Kate Bell)
“Niyah has quite a creative mind and I could always see her going into some sort of entrepreneurship and these aren’t the type of skills taught in schools or even encouraged,” Kate told Daily Mirror. “Over the last six months I really started to notice the light in her fade, she’s always been interested in learning but she was coming home quite flat. She was becoming timid, her confidence and creativity was going.”
Believing that the school was too rigid, the Hampshire entrepreneur decided to pull Niyah out of the system. She is part of a growing trend; a staggering 175,900 children in England were home-educated last year – a 15 per cent jump. Key reasons for this were found to be mental health concerns, school dissatisfaction as well as philosophical or lifestyle preferences.
Rather than following standard subjects, Kate designed a curriculum “backwards” based on the person she wants Niyah to be as an adult. The AI platform sets four daily tasks and a long-term project tailored to Niyah’s interests.
“We had to decide what skills we wanted her to have, who we want her to be as a human being and then the curriculum has been designed almost backwards from that so she can work towards those goals. It’s an AI platform that adapts to her needs and meets her where she is every day – and it’s constantly learning and evolving.
“Things such as AI, understanding technology and being able to use it is inevitable, and I want her to be able to use it properly,” Kate explained.
“Where a lot of parents take their children out and still teach them the national curriculum, I am the opposite. It’s not the school I have a problem with, it’s what’s being taught. I want her to be able to use AI, to solve problems, to be able to have critical thinking skills, as well as English, science, and reading.”
Niyah has to complete tasks as part of her learning which includes designing meals for the family – something Kate feels is important for her daughter to learn. “This involves a lot of nutrition understanding and how food fuels the body as well as cooking it. She has been given a budget to work out what food to buy – so there’s a lot to do with maths as well there.”
The platform sets Niyah four daily tasks each day and then a project that runs over two months – currently her project is understanding and identifying problems within a business. “It sounds like a thing of the future, and it’s finding ways to challenge her with things she’s genuinely interested in.”
In schools across the country, the UK government is currently investing in AI tools designed to act as tutors that adapt to student’s strengths and weaknesses.
She believes she’s teaching her daughter better life skills than what she would have got at school(Image: Kate Bell)
But the idea of artificial intelligence taking over education can be worrying, and controversial for some parents. Retired headteacher Chris McGovern, and former advisor to the Government says AI has a role to play in the classroom, but has reservations.
He spoke out in 2024 after David Game College, a private school in London, introduced the UK’s first “teacherless” GCSE class, where students learnt using a mixture of artificial intelligence platforms and virtual reality headsets.
Speaking to Sky News, he said: “I understand why [schools] may push AI. For one thing, it’s cheaper.
“The problem with AI and the computer screen is that it is a machine and it’s inert, so you’re straight away dehumanising the process of learning, taking away those interpersonal skills and the interaction between pupils and teacher. It’s a soulless, bleak future if it’s going to be along the AI path only.”
Despite the criticism of AI in classrooms generally, Kate says Niyah is “lighting up” again and is more confident than ever, adding: “She’ll get into a project and she will still be doing it late into the evening because she’s really enjoying something. I’m seeing her become more confident, she’s talking to people and interacting with adults.
“She’s also picking up books again, which she hasn’t done in a really long time. I think school had just degraded her opinion towards learning.” As for socialising, Kate said it’s still important for Niyah to see her friends a few times a week, but also encourages her to speak to people of all different ages too.
Under UK law, parents do not need formal qualifications to homeschool, and councils can only make “informal enquiries” into the child’s progress.
A typical day for Niyah sees the teen wake up between 7-8am, go for a beach walk with her mum and their dog, before returning home to carry out her work, alongside day trips outside the house.
Currently, when Niyah turns 18, she won’t have a folder of certificates. Instead, her AI platform will produce a personality assessment and a portfolio of six years of practical work to show future employers – if she isn’t already running her own firm.
If she does require qualifications, Kate says her daughter will have been taught enough to be able to take those exams.
She said: “The platform we’ve built will package everything up she has learnt on her 18th birthday and will outline everything she’s had in terms of her education and the work she has done. It is designed to do a very in-depth assessment of her and her personality that she can then take to an employer.
“Right now I hope that by the time she is 18 she’s actually already running a very successful business that she started when she was 13, or she will have a portfolio of six years worth of work and a complete personality assessment.”
According to researcher and data scientist Dr Imed Bouchrika, the most common concern of people unfamiliar with home educating is socialisation. “Homeschooling is generally short in providing peer-to-peer interactions to children. It lacks in providing heterogeneous associations, promotes dependence on parents, and automatically delays a child’s personality.” He also stressed it can limit “the diversity of beliefs and backgrounds that children may encounter in most public school settings.”
Kate acknowleged the idea of taking Niyah out of school was a controversial one, and had to try and explain her reasoning to friends and family who were unsure about the idea. Being told Niyah needs GCSE’s, exam results and an education to be able to further herself in life, Kate said when she explained the platform, the sceptics were more open to the idea.
“We’re two months into our homeschooling journey and Niyah loves it. If something happens and it doesn’t work out, I can always just enrol her again in September, but for now it’s going great,” Kate gushed.