Adler is a discussion-based programme for teenagers that teaches the things most adults wish they had learned earlier – knowledge that school doesn’t teach. 

How wealth compounds. How successful people navigate uncertainty. Why reputation and genuine relationships are so valuable. And why long-term positioning matters now more than ever.

These are the foundations that will shape a person’s trajectory for the next twenty years.

AI is replacing the skills that used to be differentiators, such as the ability to analyse data quickly, perform in-depth research, as well as the ability to consolidate information from various sources. What it cannot replace is human judgment – the ability to think independently, weigh tradeoffs, communicate persuasively, and build relationships with other people. These are the abilities that will define who stands out during their studies and in their careers.

Adler exists to give your child a competitive advantage that compounds over a lifetime.

Students who are curious about the world and want to understand it more deeply than their peers – the kind of teenager who interacts with someone impressive and wonders: how do they know all of that? Why do they carry themselves so confidently?

That gap isn’t innate. It’s foundations that can be established. And it’s exactly what Adler is designed to build.

Tuition makes your child better at writing exams. Adler helps your child understand how to position themselves for the next decade.

That’s not a criticism of tuition. Academic performance matters, and getting into a good university is important. But navigating life beyond tertiary education requires a different set of skills that can’t be learned through the traditional route: how your child thinks, reasons, decides, and communicates.

These are the precisely the skills that they will build through our discussion-based programme at Adler.

The Foundations Programme is designed to run alongside school, not compete with it. Sessions are 2 hours per week, scheduled around school commitments.

In practice, many students will find that the way they think and communicate in school improves – particularly in subjects that require reasoning, writing, or discussion.

Our Foundations Programme consists of 10 weekly sessions and The Adler Dialogue, delivered across two phases. View our Programme Structure page for more details.

Students at this age are beginning to think more carefully about their future, making it the ideal window to build these foundations before university and early adulthood.

We may accept younger students who demonstrate the qualities to contribute and benefit meaningfully from our discussions.

Some of the students who benefit most start out as the quietest in the room. The small-group format and structured facilitation mean that every student can contribute at their own pace – and most become more articulate and confident within a few sessions.

We also treat confidence in discussion as an outcome, not a prerequisite. The facilitator guides every student to contribute meaningfully without being overbearing.

If your child is the kind of person who thinks deeply but hasn’t had the right environment to bring that out, or has not yet built the confidence to share their thoughts and ideas – this environment is perfect for them.

What we do at Adler is to provide a wide range of perspectives of the world that traditional education does not typically provide. The goal is to encourage students to better understand where the world is heading, such that they will proactively position themselves better for it, rather than being constantly caught out by structural changes as they happen.

Many successful adults tell us they wish they had developed this mental framework earlier. Most didn’t build it until their late twenties, if at all. That gap in time is exactly what we’re trying to close.

After every session, parents will not only receive a summary of what we covered, but also a few thought-provoking questions related to those topics.

The questions are designed to spark informal conversations around the dinner table – so you can see firsthand how your child explains ideas, reasons through questions, and engages with complex topics, and how these mature over the course of our programme.

Over time their development tends to show up in school, in conversations, and in how they approach future opportunities.

Each session runs for two hours and is built around core ideas – how the AI supply chain is interconnected, how to position for a widening wealth gap, how to negotiate effectively, how great investors approach risk.

Students do not just sit and listen passively. They will discuss, argue, question, and defend their reasoning. The facilitator’s job is not to deliver answers but to push thinking deeper – to ask insightful follow-up questions, and sharpen students’ answers.

By the end of a session, students haven’t just learned about a topic. They will have practiced using their minds in a way most teenagers rarely get to.

Cohorts are capped at 12 students. The quality of discussion degrades quickly in larger groups. Every student needs to be an active participant, not an observer, and that only works when the group is small enough for everyone to be genuinely heard.