Homeschooled Kim family accelerates through British education, wins places at top universities

A family that began homeschooling its younger children during the COVID-19 lockdown has produced a string of high academic achievers who have progressed rapidly through the British education system and into top universities.

Elias Kim, 14, from Burton upon Trent, will begin a biomedical engineering degree at Imperial College London later this month after gaining four A* grades in maths, further maths, chemistry and physics and an A in biology at A-level. He first sat GCSEs at age 10 and achieved grade 9s across the board. Elias is one of five children educated in an accelerated programme run by his three elder sisters; Juliana, 24, and Clara, 22, are PhD students at Imperial, Ella, 20, studies at University College London, and Ariel, 11, has already taken GCSEs early and recorded top grades in maths, chemistry and physics.

The family's academic path began in South Korea, where the three eldest daughters were born, before the Kims moved to Canada in 2006, then to Northern Ireland and later to Coventry when the children's father, Sung Kim, took a university post. Their mother, Kyounghwa Jung, a former mathematics teacher, manages the household; Korean remains the main language at home.

The siblings say the turning point came during lockdown in 2020, when Juliana, Clara and Ella began formally teaching Elias and Ariel because they were dissatisfied with the primary-school pace and provision. Using South Korean textbooks alongside the British curriculum, the sisters homeschooled the younger children while pursuing their own degrees. "We could not stand them learning nothing, because at primary school they didn’t provide much learning or support," Juliana told The Times. "Elias was finding it boring and it wasn’t fast enough [for him], so we did extra support to make it work."

Teachers in Belfast had previously suggested Elias skip a year after noticing that his reading and maths were ahead of his classmates. The family says the UK education system, which allows early specialisation and rapid progression in subject areas, has helped them pursue advanced study while moving quickly through basics.

The Kims have turned their approach into a business. The three eldest sisters have launched NewGenTutor, offering online classes in maths and science at about £55 an hour. The family said the service aims to help other pupils who may be under-challenged in mainstream classrooms.

The siblings' achievements have attracted public attention partly because the family also publishes a short, informal intelligence test that ranges from classical literature to physics and biology. The questions cited by the family and reproduced in news accounts illustrate the breadth of their focus: a classical-mythology item asks which Olympian deity is sometimes excluded from the standard list; biology items ask which organelle initiates programmed cell death and how hydrogen bonding affects boiling points; physics questions include a basic mechanics problem on energy and motion down an incline; and an optics question asks why the sky appears blue.

On the optics question, the family cites the standard explanation of Rayleigh scattering: blue light has a shorter wavelength than red light and is scattered more efficiently by air molecules, causing the sky to appear blue during daylight when shorter wavelengths are redirected in all directions. For the cellular biology question, they identify the mitochondrion as central to programmed cell death, noting that mitochondrial outer-membrane permeabilisation can release factors such as cytochrome c that activate caspases and trigger the apoptotic cascade.

A sample dilution problem they provide — preparing 50 millilitres of a 1:200 dilution — illustrates practical laboratory numeracy: the correct volume of original culture is 0.25 millilitres, with 49.75 millilitres of sterile water added to reach the target volume. A representative mechanics question involving a 2 kilogram block sliding down a frictionless incline of 30 degrees from a height of 5 metres yields a velocity at the bottom of about 9.9 metres per second (using v = sqrt(2gh)), and a time to travel a 10-metre incline of roughly 2 seconds (using acceleration g sin 30 degrees).

The family also cites a classical-literature item: in Homer’s Odyssey, Poseidon chiefly delays Odysseus’s return because Odysseus blinded the Cyclops Polyphemus, Poseidon’s son. A simple number-sequence problem included in the test — the sequence 2, 6, 12, 20, 30 — follows the pattern n(n+1) and yields 110 as its 10th term.

Elias had considered applying to the University of Oxford but said an application was rejected for not meeting the university's GCSE requirements; Ariel has said she hopes to meet those requirements and apply for mathematics at Oxford in future. The family has said they would like to make their methods available to other pupils and parents who feel mainstream schooling does not match a child's pace or interests.

Education experts caution that accelerated progression is not suitable for every child and underscore the importance of social and emotional support alongside academic advancement. The Kim family’s experience reflects one pathway through the British education system that combines parental involvement, supplementary materials and early specialisation in STEM subjects, and it highlights debates over how best to serve pupils who are advanced in particular disciplines.

The Kims’ story has been reported in national newspapers and has prompted discussion about homeschooling, accelerated study, and the balance between standard school timetables and tailored learning for gifted pupils. Their tutoring venture represents an effort to formalise and commercialise the methods they used during lockdown into support that others can purchase.

The family's record of early testing, high public exam scores and entry to competitive university courses underscores both the potential and the practical challenges of educating high-achieving children across a range of scientific and humanities subjects.