We left Britain behind to ‘world school’ our children around 23 countries

When Nikki Collinson-Phenix first suggested to her husband, Ian, that they leave their home on the Isle of Wight, to take their children, Laanii, 12 and Raif, six, out of school and go travelling for two years, he thought she had “gone insane”.

But an assault at work changed his mind. Ian, a trained carpenter and fencer, was working as a prison officer at the time and Nikki, a chiropractor, also had a back injury which had put her out of her work for a year. During that time, Nikki re-evaluated her life and priorities.

“We would drop the kids off at breakfast club first thing, then pick them up after they’d had their tea, so we only ever saw them in the evenings,” she says. “We’d spend our weekends doing laundry and ferrying them back and forth to clubs. By the time Sunday came around, I was already prepping to start it all again as Monday loomed.”

Nikki decided if something didn’t change soon, the children would have grown up and life would end up passing them by. She had always dreamed of globetrotting after getting the travel bug on a backpacking trip around Asia, Africa and Australia in her 20s.  

“I never actually went on holiday when I was a child,” she says. “I wanted to give my kids a different sort of childhood to the one I had, with plenty of freedom and the experience of different cultures.”

Nikki, who runs a number of online businesses including Global Trailblazing, an online youth club and social network for kids, which she describes as being rather like a Scouts group, started to plan their trip and think about how they would coordinate everything.

“My husband and I are polar opposites,” she says, with a laugh. “I’m very organised and describe myself as a recovering perfectionist whereas he’s disorganised but very practical. We joke that I’m the brains and he’s the brawn.”

They started planning their trip in 2019 when their children were two and almost eight. “I wanted Raif to be fully potty trained by the time we left as I didn’t want to be dealing with nappies in a caravan,” Nikki says. 

“We also didn’t want to be one of those people who sold everything to fund our travels so we ended up renting out our three-bedroom house to a friend, trading in our old caravan for a new one and setting a two-year timescale.”

They had planned to leave in April 2021 but the third lockdown delayed things and they ended up departing in September 2021.

They started in France before heading to Spain, then Croatia, Portugal, back through Spain, France, Italy and into Slovenia and the Balkans. In the Balkans, the family found that they weren’t as restricted by post-Brexit Schengen visa regulations, which stipulate that they can only spend 90 days in the same country in any 180-day period.

Nikki says she realised over lockdown, like so many parents, that her daughter Laani would be better doing online schooling and self-directed learning than she would trying to be taught by her.

“She does live online lessons for the main subjects, like English and maths, whereas we both take turns to homeschool Raif,” she says. “I’ll do the morning sessions while Ian does the afternoons.”

They also do live meet-ups with local “world schoolers” once a week, which Nikki arranges through an online group, and live fitness and mindfulness sessions once a week.

Raif has also been enrolled at a number of local schools in places they have travelled to, including Romania and Bulgaria. Laani also joined a girls’ football team in Croatia and a gymnastics team in Bulgaria.

Nikki says she was mostly ignorant about home educating before they left the UK but that she thinks it’s brought huge benefits to both children.

“Raif is currently about two years ahead in terms of his maths and English skills,” she says. “He’s very bright but also pretty lively and I think he might have been labelled as disruptive if he’d been at a normal school.”

She says that even though they are constantly on the move, their home, an eight-metre caravan which they bought for £14,000, and the fact the children have the same online classmates every day, maintain a sense of stability.

Some of their world-schooling highlights have included “magical” trips to Greece, Vienna and Venice. “My daughter started reading the Percy Jackson books which are based on the Greek myths,” Nikki explains. “She started asking if we could visit some of the places mentioned in the books, so we planned out a trip across Greece which included the Acropolis, Olympia and Mount Olympus. It meant the world to see her so happy and in awe.”

Their son, Raif, is also a big fan of Go Jetters, an educational programme on CBeebies where four adventure-seeking superheroes explore places all around the world.

“Raif had watched this one episode, where they turned all the canals in Venice into roads and became very interested in the idea that a whole city could be built on water,” Nikki says. “So we put it into our itinerary and went to Venice. He loved going on the gondolas and mapping the city out.”

So what’s next for the intrepid explorers? “Central America and Southeast Asia, hopefully,” says Nikki.

It’s not all picture-perfect “making memories” moments, however. “Navigating all the visa restrictions, language barriers and Schengen restrictions has been really challenging at times,” says Nikki. “Google Translate is a lifesaver when it comes to overcoming language barriers.”

There is also the issue of making sure their children are socialising and regularly meeting other children the same age. “We’ve got better at finding other families who are arranging playdates for the kids now, but it can still be tricky in some areas,” Nikki says.

She still believes, however, that though travelling the world might seem like a pipe dream, it is actually highly achievable. 

“I’ve met so many families who would love to do what we do but don’t think it’s possible. It really is. We are no one special, we just had a dream that we made a goal and made it happen.”

Nikki Collinson-Phenix has written a book, Wanderlust Calling – The Ultimate Guide To Worldschooling and Full-Time Family Travel, offering further advice to those looking to follow her path.