New Office Expansion
Seven months after opening, we had more learners than desks. In October 2025 we expanded the premises — modular hexagonal tables, a shelf of student builds, and a window onto the wetlands.
On 20 October 2025 Sheen expanded its premises at Century City to make room for more students. It is the least dramatic photograph on this timeline — an empty classroom, before anyone is in it — and one of the more meaningful entries.
Running out of room is the good version of a problem
Sheen Academy opened in March 2025 and passed 120 enrolled learners within six months. At some point in that curve the constraint stops being demand and starts being furniture: how many groups can run in parallel, how many Saturday slots exist, how many learners an instructor can actually keep track of.
We could have solved it by putting more chairs into the existing rooms. We deliberately did not. Class sizes at the academy are set so that an instructor knows which learner is stuck and on what — that is the entire pedagogical model, and it does not survive a room that is too full. Growth had to come from more rooms, not fuller ones.
Designed for group work, not rows
The new space is fitted with modular trapezoid tables rather than rows of desks. They push together into pods of three or four and pull apart again for individual work, which matters more than it sounds: robotics is a collaborative subject taught in most schools on furniture designed for silent writing.
The other fixture is a shelf of completed builds along one wall. Not a display of what the equipment can do — a display of what learners in this room have done. Walking past other children's finished projects on your way to your seat does more for expectations than anything an instructor says in the first ten minutes.
What the expansion unlocked
More rooms meant more of everything that follows in this timeline: additional weekly class groups, school excursions that no longer had to displace regular classes, teacher training sessions, and the holiday camps that now run in every long break.
It also gave us somewhere to develop and test course material properly. A good deal of what ends up in our school programmes and on our own hardware gets tried out first with learners in these rooms.
Sheen Academy is at Century Square, Century City. See class times and levels, or book a trial lesson.
