The letter sat on our kitchen table for two weeks before we sent it.
Not because we were unsure about the decision — by then, we'd thought about little else for months. But because asking your children's school for permission to take them out for a year of world travel is a different kind of ask. You're not requesting a day off for a dentist appointment. You're saying: we believe the world will teach them better than this classroom will.
That's a hard thing to put in writing.
How the school conversation actually went
We sat down with Emilia's teacher in Hessen in the spring of 2025. We came prepared — a written learning plan, a curriculum overview, a rough route map. We were ready to argue. To justify. To explain the research on what children actually need to develop well.
The teacher listened. Then she said something we didn't expect: "I think this is a wonderful thing for your daughters. Let's make it work."
We were not the first family she'd seen do this. She asked one thing: that we stay in contact, keep records, and make sure core subjects — maths, German, reading — continued throughout. We agreed immediately. The school issued a formal written leave for the full duration of the trip.
That conversation took forty minutes. We had been afraid of it for weeks.
Is taking kids out of school to travel legal?
This depends entirely on where you live — and the answer is usually more nuanced than a simple yes or no.
In Germany, compulsory schooling (Schulpflicht) is taken seriously. You cannot simply withdraw your children and go. But many German states — Hessen included — allow extended school leave for extraordinary circumstances, including educational world travel, when applied for properly and supported by a concrete learning plan. Some states are more flexible than others.
In the UK, headteachers have discretion to grant term-time holidays. In many US states, existing homeschooling laws effectively cover worldschooling families. Australia has flexible distance education programmes designed specifically for travelling families.
The short version: research your specific country and region before you start. The rules are almost always more navigable than they first appear. Coming to the school with a real plan makes an enormous difference. For a broader picture of how families navigate this internationally, the UNESCO overview on homeschooling and educational alternatives is worth reading.
What we were afraid would happen
We had a list. We were afraid Emilia would fall behind her classmates. That Elina would miss the social rhythm of school — the friends, the structure, the daily belonging. That we'd underestimate how much work teaching actually is. That we'd hit a border crossing in the middle of a grammar lesson and everything would fall apart.
Some of those fears came partly true. Some didn't come true at all.
Emilia did fall behind in one specific thing: German comma placement in subordinate clauses. The kind of rule that only seems important when it comes up in a test. We worked on it in the camper and caught up quickly. Everything else? She moved ahead.
Elina missed her friends — genuinely, at first. That was real. But children adapt faster than adults expect. Within two months she'd made friends in four countries without sharing a language with any of them. That's a different kind of social skill, and harder to build than knowing the rules of a German classroom.
What actually happened instead
Emilia wrote a travel journal across four countries without being asked. She calculated fuel costs and exchange rates to figure out how many days we could stay somewhere. She interviewed a Montenegrin sheep farmer about soil conditions — unprompted — and then went back to the camper and looked up what he'd told her.
None of that came from our curriculum. It came from proximity to real things.
We still did structured morning lessons — two focused hours, most days. But what the afternoons and evenings taught didn't fit into any school subject. Tolerance for uncertainty. Observational curiosity. The ability to communicate with someone who doesn't share your language. A completely different relationship with screens — because when the world outside is genuinely interesting, screens struggle to compete. We wrote about how that shift happened in our practical screen time guide.
What we'd do differently
Go earlier. We waited until Emilia was nine. In retrospect, we'd have gone at seven. The younger the child, the more naturally they absorb everything — language, flexibility, cultural difference. There's no "right age" to start, but there's definitely not a "too young."
We'd also have been more honest with ourselves about rest. The road is not relentless adventure. Some weeks it's just logistically exhausting, and trying to run morning lessons on three hours of sleep and a broken alternator is a recipe for everyone feeling like they've failed. Build real rest weeks into the plan.
And we'd have talked to the school sooner. The conversation we dreaded for weeks took forty minutes and produced a formal agreement that gave us peace of mind for the whole trip. Most schools, when approached respectfully and with a plan, will work with you.
Is this something your family could do?
Possibly. It requires genuine commitment from both parents — to the teaching and to the logistics. But if you're wondering whether it's remotely realistic, the answer for most families is: more realistic than you think.
Start with the school conversation. Come with a plan. And know that the hardest part is usually the letter on the kitchen table — not what happens after you send it.
For the practical structure of how we actually run learning on the road — subjects, schedules, what we use — read our full guide to roadschooling and learning on the move. And if you want to understand the worldschooling model before you commit to anything, our piece on what worldschooling actually means is where to start.
The letter went out on a Tuesday in March. By Thursday, we had a reply. The school was in.
We've never looked back.
Timo Götz and Salima Oudefel are filmmakers and co-directors. With their three daughters — Emilia (10), Elina (6), and Enya (3) — they have been worldschooling on the road since late 2025. Their two cinematic documentaries about previous journeys are available in our shop.