About OurSchoolHouse: Built From the Inside of the Experience

Where OSH Came From

In 2011, in Kundapur — a small coastal town in Karnataka — a family made the decision to homeschool their child. There was no roadmap, no community to ask, and almost nothing useful available online for Indian families considering this path. Most of what existed was from the US or UK and none of it reflected the reality of educating a child at home in India.

My mother and I figured it out as we went. We started with textbooks because that was what we knew. Over time we found something that worked far better — learning built around genuine understanding rather than memorisation, paced to the student rather than the syllabus, and wide enough to include music, sport, and the kind of curiosity that a fixed school schedule rarely has room for.

We moved to Bangalore in 2014. By then we had learned enough about NIOS — the National Institute of Open Schooling — to commit fully to the homeschooling path. I completed both my Class 10 and Class 12 through NIOS, went on to study at IIT Madras, and built a life that homeschooling made possible rather than limited.

The NIOS journey was not always smooth. I nearly missed my TMA deadline because no one told me it existed. I completed four practical records in three days because I found out about the submission requirement on day three before the exam. I passed — but the confusion, the last-minute scramble, and the absence of anyone to simply explain the process clearly stayed with me.

That gap is what OSH was built to fill.

The Gap We Saw

When I was going through NIOS, there was almost nothing reliable available online for Indian homeschooling families. No one explaining the process from the inside. No structured guidance on subject selection, TMA submission, practical records, or exam registration. No community of families who had done it and could tell you what to expect.

Over the years, as I began mentoring and supporting other students and families through the same process, I saw the same confusion repeat itself every time. The same questions, the same last-minute panics, the same avoidable mistakes. And I realised that the problem was not NIOS — NIOS is a genuinely good system. The problem was the absence of a guide.

OSH is that guide.

What OSH Is Today

OurSchoolHouse is an online homeschooling program for students from Grade 1 to Grade 12. We started in 2020 with ten students. Today we support families across India and abroad, entirely online, with a dedicated teacher for every student and a curriculum that adapts around each child rather than the other way around.

For younger students in Grades 1 to 5, we draw on internationally recognised Cambridge and California Science frameworks to build strong early foundations. For students working toward Class 10 and 12, everything we do is built around the NIOS certification pathway — the subjects, the exam preparation, the administrative process, and the parts that consistently trip families up without a guide.

Coding, foreign languages, and enrichment subjects are included as standard — not as extras, and not because they look good in a brochure, but because a complete education has always been wider than what appears on a board exam syllabus.

We are actively taking new students and working to fill our current capacity. If you are considering OSH for your child, now is the right time to get in touch.

Who We Are

OSH is run by Mihir R Shreshti, with a small team that supports the program’s delivery and growth. The team is deliberately lean — built around quality of support rather than scale for its own sake.

My mother has been part of this journey from the beginning. She was a teacher for most of her life, and the homeschooling approach we developed together over the years is the direct foundation of what OSH is built on. Her influence runs through everything we do, even where it is not explicitly named.

What We Believe About Learning

OSH is not here to police your child’s education. We are here to enable it.

The families who come to us have already made a choice — to step outside a system that was not working for their child and build something better. Our job is to give that choice the structure, the certification pathway, and the support it needs to succeed. Not to replicate school at home. Not to impose a fixed curriculum on a child who needs flexibility. To genuinely help each child learn at the pace and in the way that actually works for them.

Real learning, in our experience, is the kind that builds a picture in your mind. The kind you can pull out years later and explain simply to someone else. Not the kind you process well enough to pass a test and then forget. That standard — genuine understanding over coverage — is what every piece of content we build and every teacher we work with is held to.

We built OSH because we wished it had existed when we needed it. That is still why we run it.