FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

about hypha

Hypha is a Cambridge-accredited international school in Sintra, Portugal. We serve children from ages 3 to 11, across Pre-Primary and Primary. Our approach balances a nature immersion with strong academic foundations, in a community of small classes and highly-trained educators.

Hypha was founded in July 2023 by Jennifer Nava, an engineer who went looking for a school for her own daughters. She found that the schools available either took academics seriously or took nature and childhood seriously, but not both.

Before opening Hypha, Jennifer trained as a school founder, including at one of the most celebrated nature-based schools in the world, and visited schools built by its alumni in Hungary, Spain, and Portugal. The school she built brings the engineer’s instinct to a question most often answered by intuition alone.

Hypha opened its doors in September 2023 with our first Pre-Primary cohort, and Primary launched the following year.

Hypha is for families who want a school that takes academic rigor and a nature-immersed childhood equally seriously.

Parents who choose us value real foundations in literacy and numeracy, and they want their children outside, moving through the world around them with curiosity. They believe these things go together, and that spending time in nature is an essential part of a holistic education.

Hypha is the only internationally-accredited school in the Sintra-Cascais area that integrates daily nature immersion across every year group. Most schools in the region choose an academically rigorous approach or an alternative, nature-based approach; Hypha is the only school that gives children both.

Our Primary classes have sixteen children with two to three educators in each room, closer to a tutoring ratio than a traditional classroom. We use the Cambridge International framework, and our days move between structured work and time outdoors.

From the upper primary years, our learners participate in a dedicated Critical Thinking and Socratic Seminar program that is rare at this level.

Yes. Hypha is licensed by the Portuguese Ministry of Education and accredited by Cambridge International, a department of the University of Cambridge.

curriculum and approach

In Primary

We use the Cambridge International framework. Cambridge defines a set of clear learning objectives in each subject for every year group, recognized by international schools and universities around the world. We work to meet those objectives in our own way, which is rigorous and sequenced but does not rely on the textbooks, testing cycles, or homework that Cambridge schools traditionally use.

To deliver the academic foundations, we choose evidence-based curricula that engage children and reflect current best practice. Read Write Inc. anchors our literacy work, and Singapore Mathematics anchors our numeracy. Both have decades of research behind them. For other subjects, we choose curricula that are evidence-based, engaging for children, modern, and compatible with our outdoor learning model.

In Pre-Primary

We follow a Reggio Emilia and Montessori-inspired approach with forest school sensibilities, grounded in the foundations of early literacy and numeracy. As in Primary, our choices of curriculum and materials are evidence-based and built around the way children learn best at this age.

Children are outdoors 3 hours or more every day, including rainy days. We make use of outdoor tables and whiteboards to bring the learning outside, as well as a variety of outdoor spaces such as our pond, fields, shaded forest areas, and covered outdoor areas.

The main language of instruction is English, and we have minimum English language requirements for children in Primary.

Children are also exposed to Portuguese through Portuguese lessons, as well as specialist subjects that are delivered in Portuguese, including Physical Education, Music, and Art. There is no minimum Portuguese language requirement to enroll at Hypha.

No. Our approach involves continuous assessments, where children are observed and their learning is documented rigorously on a daily basis. Children are assessed against specific objectives in ways that are low-stakes and invisible to the child. This could be in group project for example, classroom activities, or one-on-one questions asked to the child. We also perform periodic reading assessments to ensure every child is improving in literacy.

While we assess each child’s progress internally, we do not give grades and do not share the results directly with the children.

Parents receive a comprehensive report on their child’s learning at the end of each term, along with personalized comments from every educator that teaches their child.

No; Hypha students are not assigned homework. Teachers may occasionally request students complete an activity at home or prepare something to share with the classroom from their personal life.

Children are not allowed to bring personal screens to school, and they do not use laptops or other personal devices at Hypha. The only exception is for the Years 5 and 6, who occasionally will use shared Hypha devices to research on Britannica or to learn basic computer literacy. Children are never given open access to the internet or to computers.

Teachers may use classroom projectors to enhance the learning, such as by showing an image or a video, or to use the projector as a whiteboard. However, screens are never at the center of the learning, and the curriculum is designed to be delivered in person by the teacher rather than through a digital medium.

Our small class sizes allow teachers to know each child and adapt learning to their individual level. Children who are ready for greater challenge are offered more advanced material, higher-level questioning, independent projects, and opportunities to work at an accelerated pace where appropriate.

Because our classes are small and flexible, we can sometimes allow children to join an older year group for specific subjects such as Mathematics or English when it is clearly the right fit academically and socially. This allows children to continue being challenged without losing the benefits of their peer group and wider classroom community.

We aim to nurture not only strong academic ability, but also curiosity, creativity, critical thinking, and a genuine love of learning.

daily experience

Hypha offers a morning snack, lunch, and an afternoon snack for all children.

The morning snack consists of fresh fruit prepared in our kitchen. Lunch follows a Portuguese-style, whole-food diet, with many dishes based on traditional, local ingredients. The afternoon snack is typically yogurt, bread, or fruit.

We accommodate a range of dietary restrictions and allergies. If your child has specific needs, please let us know during the admissions process so we can plan accordingly. Families are also welcome to send a packed lunch from home.

We follow a no-sugar policy in the school, including during birthday celebrations.

Yes. We offer transportation to/from Cascais, and will add a route to Ericeira in September 2026.

Children are picked up and dropped off from a central location by a certified transportation provider.

Hypha enjoys an exclusive partnership with União Mucifalense (UM), a local sports club that is walking distance from the school. We use it regularly for Physical Education and have exclusive access to their facilities throughout the school day.

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The facilites include a full-size football pitch, and indoor gymnasium, volleyball courts, a gymnastics studio, a martial arts dojo, and a yoga room. We also have a swimming pool at Hypha, which we use for our extracurricular activities.

Hypha offers a wide range of extracurricular activities for children from Monday to Thursday, with a mixture of included and paid options depending on the activity and external providers.

Recent offerings have included swimming, surfing, robotics, coding, gymnastics, violin, piano, taekwondo, astronomy, strategy games, crochet, gardening, science clubs, cooking, construction club, drama, sensory play, Portuguese club, and more.

We aim to offer a balance of sports, arts, music, STEM, outdoor learning, and creative activities so that children can explore new interests and develop skills beyond the classroom. Clubs are led either by Hypha educators or by highly qualified specialists and external instructors.

Hypha does not have a school uniform.

Children wear a Hypha t-shirt for certain occasions such as field trips, school events, or class photos, but otherwise children may come to school in comfortable, practical clothing suitable for active learning, outdoor play, and messy creative activities.

community and fit

No school is right for every family, and we are honest with prospective parents when we think Hypha may not be the right environment for them. Hypha is built around balance between academic rigor and a nature-immersed childhood. Families who are committed to one end of this spectrum and want little of the other tend to be happier elsewhere. The best way to know if Hypha is right for your family is to visit.

We expect families to engage meaningfully with the school and with their child’s education. That includes communicating openly with educators about your child, attending Learning Celebrations, and trusting our team to do their work in the classroom.

We do not require frequent attendance at meetings or constant communication. We do, however, expect parents to be available for important conversations about their child.

For parents who would like to be more involved in their child’s education, we offer many opportunities for parents to directly engage.

We have a number of touch points for parents who want to engage. Tuesday coffee mornings are an informal time to spend with other parents and educators. Each year group hosts a Learning Celebration in the final weeks of the year, where children share what they have been working on with families. Camping Night is our termly community gathering. Each class also has volunteer parent representatives who coordinate communication and welcome new families.

Parents with relevant expertise or experience are sometimes invited to contribute to classroom life — leading an activity, sharing knowledge of their work, or supporting a specific project. These contributions are coordinated by the class teacher, who shapes them around the children’s current learning.

Hypha is genuinely international. Our families come from more than twenty countries, and our community reflects a wide range of backgrounds, languages, and life experiences. More than a third of our families hold multiple citizenships. We are proud of how welcoming the school feels to families arriving from elsewhere, and how naturally our children learn alongside peers from very different parts of the world.

teachers and safety

All Hypha teachers hold relevant degrees in education or their specialist subjects, and many bring international teaching experience from a range of school systems. Beyond their initial qualifications, our educators receive ongoing training in the specific curricula and pedagogies we use, including Read Write Inc., Singapore Mathematics, Positive Discipline, and our Critical Thinking and Socratic Seminar approach. We bring in expert trainers from each program regularly to observe in classrooms and work alongside our teachers. From the 2026-27 academic year, we have added an Instructional Coach and Curriculum Coordinator to support our teachers’ continued growth.

Child safety is foundational to how Hypha runs. As a licensed school, we operate under Portuguese law and Ministry of Education requirements, with detailed procedures for emergencies, access control, and safeguarding.

We run fire drills every few months, and the local fire department visits us regularly to observe and review our emergency plan. Every staff member has a defined role in our emergency procedures. We have first aid trained staff on site at all times, and we manage access to the school carefully so that we always know who is on our grounds.

All staff have completed criminal record checks under Portuguese law and are trained in Positive Discipline. We have a detailed safeguarding procedure that governs how we respond to any concern raised by a child, family, or staff member, including how concerns are investigated and documented.

Our outdoor and active learning environment also calls for thoughtful risk management. Children at Hypha climb trees, swim in our pool, work near the pond, and hike to nearby facilities. Each of these activities is covered by a written risk assessment, and our staff are trained to supervise them safely.

We are happy to share more detail with families during a visit or by request.

We work from a Positive Discipline framework, which approaches conflict as a moment for learning. Our class sizes are small enough that interactions among children are observed closely, and difficulties are usually identified and addressed early.

When patterns emerge across classrooms or over time, we engage families in the conversation, and where useful, we bring in external specialists to support a child or family. Our goal is for children to develop the social skills they are working hardest to build at this age. Conflict, when handled thoughtfully, is part of that growth.

admissions process

Visit our Application Portal to submit an application.

Yes; you can schedule an in-person visit or a remote meeting with us here.

View Fees

Yes.

For Primary, we accept children at the beginning of each Term: September, January, and April.

For Pre-Primary, we accept children in September and January.

The adaptation period is for our youngest learners who find separation difficult. For up to the first two weeks of school, a parent can stay on campus with their child at our forest school area, where a specialist educator runs games and activities outside the regular classroom.

From here, the child can see the children in the classroom playing and engaging, and is invited to join whenever they feel ready. The parent stays nearby in the forest school area. Over a few days, with gentle encouragement and the natural pull of the other children’s curiosity, most learners separate on their own.

The goal is a gradual, respectful transition that lets the child arrive at independence.

For our youngest learners in Pre-Primary who are not yet ready for a full school day, we offer the flexibility of half days, with pickup at lunchtime. Some families also choose a hybrid arrangement, with some full days and some half days, as a way to gently transition their child to the full school week.

We encourage families considering this option to visit the school and talk with us in person, so we can work out the right arrangement for your child.

Hypha welcomes children with a range of learning profiles. For children with mild additional needs, our small class sizes and the close attention of our educators are often enough to support them well within the regular classroom.

For children with more significant needs, Hypha does not have specialists on staff. We can, however, welcome external specialists into the school to work with your child and to help us develop a plan together. In all cases, the right starting point is a conversation with us about what your child needs and whether our environment is a good match.

If you are exploring Hypha for a child with additional needs, please share existing assessment reports with us before any formal meeting. This helps us give you an honest answer about whether Hypha is the right fit.

Hypha understands that some families travel for work or other reasons. We are happy to discuss extended absences on a case-by-case basis. Please reach out to us in advance so we can work out a plan that supports your child’s continued learning.