A centre providing free alternative education is to market its “particular and unique expertise” on individual career and personality profiles to support its classes.

Rigorous assessment skills developed at the Adult Education School will be offered to businesses and other organisations to fund the Hamilton-based centre.

Arlene Brock, managing director of AES, told Hamilton Rotary Club: “We can help interpret and give guidance — we believe this would be helpful for other charities dealing with young people along with schools, parents and corporations dealing with recruitment and promotions.

“We believe this is going to be a very important service in Bermuda, and will help us build a revenue stream.”

AES works with clients aged 16 and over who want to return to education after difficult experiences with traditional learning.

Ms Brock said it was unclear how many people in Bermuda struggled in standard classrooms.

“We are not keeping up-to-date statistics in Bermuda and we ought to be,” she added.

“We believe it is the case that we have about 5,000 or more people who have no formal academic certificate.”

AES was put out of commission by the Covid-19 pandemic and the team used the time to rethink the organisation’s model of tuition.

Ms Brock said that when it reopened in September 2022, AES had nine students.

“Now we have 83 learners, two years later. Thirteen of those 83 learners have registered just in the last six weeks. September is a big registration period.”

Thaao Dill, the school’s director of programming, said its present cohort of students were “mostly folks under 30 and mostly folks under 20 — these are people with the most immediate pressing need to get their high school education completed”.

However, the school also caters to senior learners, with one student aged 83 and two in their seventies.

Mr Dill added: “The prior academic history of our learner cohort is about 75 per cent to 25 per cent public to private.

“Not only are folks underserved by public education but private as well. It’s really important to underline that point.”

Mr Dill described many as suffering from “academic trauma”, such as people who were “implicitly or explicitly told by their educators that ‘you’re never going to make it’ or ‘you need to scale your dreams down’ — and it was never true”.

The two described the AES as fundamentally “empathetic” in building trust among people left with scars from bad experiences in the classroom or from family.

Mr Dill described how one learner had been jeered at in class as a child and had ended up haunted for life until making the decision to return to education.

He added: “This is the kind of stuff that happens.”

Mr Dill said education was a human right — and that while some families could afford to contribute, AES did not charge money for its services.

He explained: “Many learners who come to us are challenged financially but also a lot of people do not want to pay to revisit their academic trauma.

“They would rather pay to give themselves a little solace.”

Ms Brock said the AES encouraged its graduates to give back by taking part in ancillary activities or by “sharing their journey”.

She added: “We will put you to work if you would like to help. But we are not charging.”