Scholé Groups

Scholé Groups, now formally branded Scholé Communities, is the network of parent-led classical co-ops built around Christopher Perrin's notion of "restful learning." It is not a curriculum. It is not a school. It is a membership-free support network that supplies structure, books, and mentoring to families who gather locally to pursue a slower, more contemplative version of classical Christian education than the conventional co-op circuit offers.

Last updated: 2026-04-24 · Every Homeschool Editorial Team

At a glance

Method	Classical (restful / Scholé model); local parent-led co-op format
Worldview	Christian-ecumenical (Reformed, Catholic, Orthodox, and broadly evangelical families all participate; no doctrinal gatekeeping)
Grades	K-12 (varies by local community)
Formats	In-person weekly co-op; resource library online
Cost tier	Budget (no national membership fee; local tuition set by each community)
Parent intensity	4
ESA-common	No (communities are not registered as ESA vendors; curriculum purchased inside communities may be ESA-eligible)
Accredited	No
Established	2014
Website	scholecommunities.com

Our scoreboard (1-5)

Criterion	Score	One-line reason
Academic rigor	4	Depth of reading and discussion skews higher than most classical co-ops; pace is slower but ceiling is high
Ease of teaching	2	Parent takes primary instructional responsibility; co-op supplements but does not replace home instruction
Content quality	4	Curriculum drawn heavily from Classical Academic Press, Memoria Press, and primary-source readings, consistently strong
Flexibility	4	Each community sets its own schedule, curriculum mix, and tuition
Value for money	5	No national membership cost; local tuition is typically very modest
Worldview scope	4	Christian-ecumenical in practice; Catholic, Reformed, Anglican, and evangelical families commonly participate
Visual/design	3	Resource materials are clean but functional; the aesthetic is the books, not the branding
Support resources	4	Online resource library, leader training, and connection to ClassicalU and Scholé Academy

Who the publisher is

Scholé Communities (originally Scholé Groups, and often still referred to by that name) was launched in 2014 by Dr. Christopher Perrin and the team at Classical Academic Press. Perrin, cofounder and CEO of Classical Academic Press, author of An Introduction to Classical Education: A Guide for Parents, and a prominent voice in the classical Christian school movement, had been writing and speaking for roughly a decade on what he called scholé, a Greek term that gives us the word "school" but originally meant "restful leisure" or "undistracted time to study the things most worthwhile." The Scholé Groups network was an attempt to operationalize that concept at the local level by supporting parent-led communities that met weekly to pursue classical study together, slowly.

The network sits downstream of Classical Academic Press editorially. CAP publishes much of the curriculum Scholé Communities use, but upstream organizationally. Local communities are not franchised, not licensed, and not required to use CAP materials. What they receive from the central organization is the resource library, the brand name, leader training, access to Perrin's writing and talks, and connection to the larger network through an annual conference and regional meetups. Each local community is run by a group of parents, meets in a church or private home or rented facility, sets its own tuition, and chooses its own curriculum.

Scholé Communities does not require a membership fee. The FAQ explicitly states that "each community has access to a rich resource library and no membership fees are required." What the organization asks is that communities "come together" around the three core commitments, restful learning, classical learning, and communal learning, and that they function as genuine communities rather than as private tutoring collectives. A minimum of two families is required to register as a community.

The core pedagogy

The defining move is pace. Scholé Communities pursue the same canon and roughly the same sequence as mainstream classical Christian programs. Latin, logic, rhetoric, the Great Books, math and science in the supporting cast, but deliberately slow the pace to permit lingering, re-reading, and long discussion. Perrin's argument, drawn from Aristotle, Augustine, and the monastic tradition, is that education is formative rather than transactional, and that formation requires time that transactional schooling eliminates. A Scholé Community reads fewer books more carefully, pursues fewer subjects more deeply, and treats the weekly meeting as a feast rather than a delivery mechanism for content.

A typical weekly meeting follows what the network calls a "morning symposium" and an "afternoon seminar." Morning symposium is for younger children, typically K through fifth or sixth grade, and combines poetry, music, art, nature study, scripture, and recitation into a shared ceremonial time of roughly two hours. Older students (middle and high school) move into seminar-style discussion of literature, history, logic, and theology for another two to three hours, sometimes with formal Socratic discussion, sometimes with structured debate, almost always with a text in hand.

Curriculum varies by community but draws heavily from a shared canon. Song School Latin and Latin for Children are common at the grammar stage; The Art of Argument and The Argument Builder in logic; Classical Academic Press's Well-Ordered Language for grammar; primary-source history readings drawn from Herodotus through Dante through Austen; Euclid's Elements or a conventional math program for mathematics. The parent carries the weekday instructional work in each subject; the co-op adds the communal and discussion elements one day per week.

Signature mechanics: (1) Feast-style morning time for younger students that combines multiple disciplines in one ceremonial gathering. (2) Seminar-style discussion for older students around primary-source readings. (3) Slow pace, a single novel may take six weeks, a single philosophical text a semester. (4) Leader training offered through ClassicalU to co-op organizers, including Perrin's own course on "Scholé (Restful) Learning."

A day in the life

A Scholé Community meets one day per week, usually Tuesday or Thursday. A family with children ages seven, ten, and fourteen arrives at the host church at 9:00 AM. The morning symposium runs 9:00–11:00 for the younger two children: a shared poem recited aloud, a hymn or folk song, a short art study of a painting, a nature journal entry outdoors, a scripture passage. The fourteen-year-old joins an older students' track during this time, perhaps a Great Books discussion of The Iliad, a geometry session moving through Euclid, or a rhetoric class studying classical argument. After a communal lunch, afternoon sessions run 1:00–3:00: the seven-year-old has a Latin class, the ten-year-old has a logic class, the fourteen-year-old has a literature seminar. Parents participate as teachers, tutors, or students themselves; many communities rotate parent-teachers by subject expertise and availability.

The other four days of the week, instruction happens at home. Families complete the homework assigned by their community's co-teachers, read independently, work through math, practice Latin, and prepare for next week's discussion. Because the pace is slow, the home workload is typically lighter than in classical programs that run at conventional pace, but the parent is genuinely teaching four days a week.

What they do exceptionally well

Philosophical coherence. Scholé Communities are built on a single, articulate pedagogical theory. Perrin's scholé framework, and the network's leader training, curriculum choices, and community norms flow consistently from that center. Parents who encounter the framework and agree with it tend to find that the entire program is shaped by the same vision. This coherence is rare in homeschool communities that have grown organically.

Book selection. The canon a Scholé Community pursues is, by consistent report, better-curated than the average classical co-op's reading list. Morning symposium poetry draws from Hopkins, Herbert, and Shakespeare rather than from anthology fillers. Logic uses The Art of Argument rather than a generic critical-thinking workbook. Great Books discussions focus on primary texts rather than digests. For families who care about what their children are actually reading, this matters.

Cost structure. The absence of a national membership fee keeps the model genuinely accessible. Local community tuition, where charged, typically runs $200–$600 per family per year plus curriculum costs, a fraction of what most national co-op franchises charge. Some communities charge nothing beyond shared facility costs.

Ecumenical fit. Unlike some classical Christian networks that require statements-of-faith closely aligned with a specific Reformed or Protestant tradition, Scholé Communities in practice welcome Catholic, Orthodox, Anglican, Reformed, Lutheran, and broadly evangelical families. Doctrinal commitment to the apostolic Christian faith is the norm; denominational specifics are not gatekept. This produces unusually diverse local communities.

What they do poorly

Dependence on local leadership. Because each community is parent-led and curriculum choices are local, the quality of a Scholé Community depends almost entirely on the vision, preparation, and persistence of its founding parents. A community organized by experienced classical educators produces a substantively better educational experience than one organized by well-meaning parents still learning the model. The national organization's leader training helps, but the variance is real.

Not a standalone curriculum. Scholé Communities supplement home instruction; they do not replace it. A parent hoping to outsource the majority of the weekly instructional load will be disappointed. The model explicitly assumes the parent is teaching four days a week and the community is a shared fifth day.

Limited geographic coverage. Communities are concentrated in metropolitan areas with established classical Christian networks. Texas, Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia, and parts of the Midwest. Families in rural areas, the Pacific Northwest, and the Northeast may find no local community within driving distance and must either start one or work without.

Slow pace can mislead. The "restful learning" frame is sometimes read as "easy learning," which it is not. Scholé Communities read fewer books but read them more carefully, and the academic expectations at the high school level are competitive with any classical program. Families who arrive expecting a lighter academic load sometimes find the reading expectations heavier than they anticipated.

Who it fits / who it doesn't

• Pick a Scholé Community if: you are already committed to a classical Christian education; you want a slower, more contemplative pace than mainstream classical co-ops offer; you are comfortable teaching four days a week at home with one community day; your family is Christian with broadly ecumenical openness; you value discussion, recitation, and shared reading over check-box completion; you want affordable access to a peer network.

• Skip Scholé Communities if: you want a curriculum-in-a-box without parent-led instruction; you need secular or non-Christian framing; you prefer a fast-paced academic program that covers many texts in a year; you have no local community and are not positioned to start one; you need ESA-approved vendor infrastructure.

Cost honest assessment

Scholé Communities do not charge national membership fees. Local communities set their own tuition, which typically covers facility rental, materials, and any paid teacher roles. Tuition across a representative sample of communities as of April 2026 runs approximately $200–$700 per family per year, with some communities offering discounted rates for additional children and some charging only actual facility-share costs. Curriculum purchased by the family for home use. Latin texts, logic books, math programs, literature, adds another $300–$800 annually for typical subject coverage.

By comparison: Classical Conversations Foundations + Essentials tuition runs approximately $1,800–$2,400 per student, with similar curriculum costs on top. Classical Conversations Challenge for upper grades runs $2,200–$2,800. Scholé Communities are substantially cheaper, by design, and place more of the educational work at home.

A realistic all-in family budget for two elementary children and one middle-schooler in a typical Scholé Community: $1,200–$2,200 annually including all curriculum, local tuition, and shared community costs.

ESA eligibility notes

Scholé Communities themselves are not registered ESA vendors because they do not sell curriculum or charge enrollment fees centrally. Individual families using ESA funds typically purchase the underlying curriculum. Classical Academic Press Latin materials, Memoria Press classical texts, literature sets, through standard ESA-approved bookseller marketplaces. Local community tuition may or may not be ESA-reimbursable depending on the state's definition of eligible educational expenses and whether the community is organized as a registered educational cooperative. Families should verify with their specific state ESA administrator. Classical Academic Press is approved on most marketplaces that permit Christian classical curriculum.

Alternatives

• Classical Conversations, a family would pick Classical Conversations over a Scholé Community if they want a structured national franchise with standardized curriculum, predictable pacing, and a widely-available local presence, accepting the higher tuition and more prescribed content.
• Memoria Press Online Academy, a family would pick Memoria Press Online over a Scholé Community if they want live-taught classical courses in a formal online school environment without the need for a local co-op.
• Wilson Hill Academy, a family would pick Wilson Hill over a Scholé Community if they want a fully online classical Christian academy with accredited transcripts and live synchronous classes rather than a local parent-led co-op.

How we verified this

Our editorial team reviewed the Scholé Communities corporate website at scholecommunities.com, the About and FAQ pages, Christopher Perrin's biographical materials at Classical Academic Press and the Association of Classical Christian Schools, and Perrin's Wikipedia entry. We cross-referenced with the ClassicalU course on Scholé learning and reviewed community tuition pages across a representative sample of local communities in Texas, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Prices and program details verified April 2026.