Hannah Foster of Little Classroom: Build the Environment Around How Children Actually Learn

Sep 18, 2026

There’s a lot of conversation in education about helping children “catch up”, “keep up” or “reach expectations”.

But my conversation with Hannah Foster, founder of Little Classroom, brought it back to something much more fundamental.

What if the problem isn’t always the child?

What if sometimes the environment simply isn’t helping them learn?

Hannah is a finalist for Tutor Business of the Year, sponsored by Jo Brianti, Data Protection Specialist, at The Class Business Awards 2026.

After 17 years working in schools, including a decade as an assistant head and later as a deputy head and Head of Early Years, Hannah found herself unexpectedly made redundant. What followed wasn’t an immediate jump back into another senior education role. Instead, it became an opportunity to rethink what learning could look like when you take away some of the pressure, make groups smaller and build the experience around the individual child.

Two years later, Little Classroom is supporting more than 55 children across just two and a half teaching days each week, and the model is already beginning to expand through franchising.

Sometimes stepping away gives you space to build something better

Hannah had spent most of her career inside education and had worked her way into senior leadership, so returning to another school role would have been the obvious next step.

But after redundancy, she realised she didn’t actually want to go straight from one high-pressure job into another.

“I just wanted to work part-time hours and just take the foot off the gas pedal.”

With two young children of her own, Hannah wanted something that gave her more space while still allowing her to use the enormous amount of experience she had built over 17 years.

That decision became Little Classroom.

And I think there’s a really important business lesson in that.

Sometimes we assume that starting a business has to mean working harder, longer and faster than ever before. But a new business can also be an opportunity to deliberately design work differently.

The question isn’t only, “What can I build?”

It can also be:

How do I actually want my working week to feel?
Which parts of my previous career do I want to keep?
Which parts am I absolutely ready to leave behind?
What can I create that works for the customer AND for me?

That’s exactly what Hannah has done.

The idea wasn’t another traditional tuition centre

Little Classroom is designed primarily for primary-aged children and offers face-to-face learning in groups of no more than six.

Children come for two-hour sessions where reading, writing and maths sit alongside practical activities, exploration and play.

As Hannah explained:

“Children need to learn whatever age they’re at, but actually young children particularly need to learn in the right environment that’s play-based.”

That’s what makes the model different from a more traditional tuition centre.

The children aren’t simply sitting at desks for two hours completing worksheets. The learning is structured, but it’s also practical, social and designed to allow children to be children.

For Hannah, that environment isn’t a nice extra.

It’s part of the product.

Find the gap that existing businesses aren’t quite filling

A big part of Little Classroom’s growth has come from the home education community.

Hannah now works predominantly with home-educated children, alongside some after-school provision, and she has seen first-hand how varied families’ reasons for choosing home education can be.
Some children have had difficult experiences in school.

Some families feel their child’s needs haven’t been met.

Others have made home education their first choice from the beginning.

And many parents still want professional support with the core skills of reading, writing and maths, but in a setting that feels much more personal.

That’s the gap Little Classroom has stepped into.

Hannah offers:

small-group learning with a qualified teacher
individual support based on each child’s gaps and next steps
guidance for parents between sessions
reading, writing and maths within a play-based environment
social interaction without a large classroom setting

That combination is important because it doesn’t try to recreate school on a smaller scale.

It offers something genuinely different.

Personalisation is much easier when you actually know the child

One of the strongest parts of Hannah’s model is the level of individual knowledge she builds around each learner.

When you’re teaching six children rather than 30, you can notice the tiny things.

A pencil grip.

A letter formation issue.

A gap in phonics.

A child who needs more challenge.

A child who simply needs a different explanation.

Hannah said:

“I can really get to know the children and really ensure that they make progress.”

Parents are part of that process too. Hannah gives them guidance on what to practise at home and helps them understand what their child might need next.

That relationship between teacher, child and parent is particularly important in home education, where families may be looking for reassurance as much as academic tuition.

They don’t necessarily need somebody to take over.

They need somebody experienced enough to guide them.

When the environment changes, the progress can be huge

The impact Hannah has seen in just two years is incredible.

For some children, the first change is emotional.

They may have arrived after a difficult experience in school, lacking confidence or feeling anxious around learning and other children.

Little Classroom gives them a much smaller, calmer environment where they can start rebuilding that confidence and form friendships.

Hannah described seeing not only relationships develop between children, but between parents too, with families meeting for coffees and walks while their children are in class.

Then there’s the academic progress.

“We’ve got children who… have made two or three years progress in just one year.”

That’s an enormous result.

But what’s interesting is Hannah’s explanation for why it can happen.

Sometimes the intervention itself isn’t enormous.

It can be “absolutely tiny, minute things” that make the difference because somebody has finally had enough time and space to spot exactly where the child is struggling.

That’s such an important reminder for anyone delivering education.

Franchising was built into the vision early

Little Classroom may only be two years old, but Hannah has already begun franchising the model.

That might sound quick, but she told me something really interesting.

“I didn’t realise what I was doing, but I did build it with franchise in mind.”

Her leadership, management and compliance background meant she naturally created structure around the business from early on. She also had a clear belief that there should be more alternative education provision available to children and families across the country.

That purpose sits underneath the growth plan.

Hannah isn’t franchising simply because she wants more locations.

She believes more families need access to qualified teachers delivering education in environments where children can learn differently.

And she’s very clear about who should deliver it.

Little Classroom franchisees need to be qualified, experienced teachers.

Hannah already has an ex-head teacher and another highly experienced teacher joining the network, and both new locations are being run from home-based learning spaces similar to her own model.

That keeps the expertise at the centre of the brand.

Growth works best when the model is specific

What I really like about Little Classroom is how specific the model is.

It isn’t trying to be everything to everyone.

Hannah knows:

who the core customer is
how many children should be in a group
how long the sessions should be
what type of teacher should deliver them
what the learning environment should feel like
where the value sits for parents

That specificity is a strength.

When you know exactly what makes the experience work, it becomes much easier to protect it as you grow.

And that matters because Little Classroom Wakefield has already launched, with Little Classroom Harrogate following straight behind it.

The challenge now is to take what works in Hannah’s original setting and reproduce the principles without losing the personal, child-centred experience that made the business successful in the first place.

Sometimes the best business ideas come from questioning the default

Hannah’s story is such a good example of what can happen when experience meets a genuine gap in the market.

She knew schools.

She knew teaching.

She knew leadership.

And because she understood the traditional system so deeply, she could also see where something different might be valuable.

Little Classroom isn’t anti-school.

Hannah is very clear that some children thrive there, including her own.

It simply recognises that one model won’t suit every child.

That’s where the business opportunity and the impact meet.

The lesson isn’t necessarily that you need to invent something completely new.

Sometimes the strongest idea comes from looking at the standard way something is done and asking:

Who isn’t being served well by this?

And then building something specifically for them.

Watch the full interview

In our full conversation, Hannah shares how 17 years in education led to Little Classroom, why she wanted to build a very different working life after redundancy, how she supports home-educated children and families, the extraordinary progress some learners have made and why she believes the model has the potential to grow across the country.

👉 Watch Hannah’s full finalist interview here.

Hannah Foster is a finalist for Tutor Business of the Year, sponsored by Jo Brianti, Data Protection Specialist, at The Class Business Awards 2026.

And if Hannah’s story has got you thinking about what YOU could do differently in your own business, then I want you in the room with us on Saturday 10 October 2026 at the National Conference Centre in Solihull.

Because this is exactly what The Class Business Live is about.

It’s about stepping away from delivery for a day and giving yourself the space to look at your business properly. What’s working? What needs changing? Where’s the opportunity you haven’t acted on yet? And who could you meet in that room who helps you see the next move completely differently?

It’s going to be ambitious, useful, energising and a LOT of fun.

So if you’ve been spending all year pouring your energy into everyone else, give yourself this day.

👉 Book your ticket, join us in Solihull on 10 October and come and be part of a room full of people who absolutely get what you’re building.