The Race to Personalize Education Worldwide – An Exclusive Interview with Nelson Barrios
- Mar 31
- 5 min read
Nelson Barrios grew up at altitude, raised in a ski resort between the French and Spanish Pyrenees. After competing as an elite cross-country skier and biathlete, he traded the slopes for education, teaching for over fifteen years across Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the UAE. He speaks five languages, has taught thousands of students, and kept returning to one question, why does great teaching only reach a lucky few?
That question led to Edukko, the Dubai-based EdTech platform he founded in 2021. Now serving families in eight countries, it offers personalized tutoring, academic mentorship, and specialist support across major international curricula through a hand-picked network of 700 qualified Edukkators. At the heart of it is a founder who still remembers the moment a struggling student finally understands, and says that feeling still drives everything.
Nelson Barrios, Founder, Edukko, EdTech & Education Innovator
Who is Nelson Barrios?
Look, I’m someone who has had a few different lives, I suppose. There was the skiing chapter. I was a competitive cross-country skier and biathlete growing up in the Pyrenees, training seriously, racing at an elite level. That world teaches you things that no classroom really can. Discipline. How to keep going when everything in your body is telling you to stop. How to stay calm and precise under pressure. In biathlon, you’re sprinting flat out, and then you have to be completely still to shoot. That mental side of sport, I carry into everything I do.
Then I became a teacher, and honestly it didn’t feel like a career choice so much as just the right thing. I’m a father now. I speak five languages. I’ve lived in four countries. And somewhere in all of that, I realized that what I care about deeply is people. Watching someone understand something they didn’t understand before. That moment. That’s what fifteen years in classrooms has been about for me.
And now there’s Edukko. Which started as an idea and became something I think about constantly. How do we make sure that the quality of support a student gets doesn’t depend on their postcode, their parents’ income, or whether they happened to find the right teacher at the right moment?
What inspired you to start your journey in education, and how does it shape your approach today?
It started small. When I was a student in the UK, I had a part-time job as a language assistant in a public school, helping kids speak more confidently. And alongside that, I was working at the university as a note-taker for students with disabilities. That combination, I didn’t expect it to shape me the way it did. Watching someone struggle not because they weren’t capable, but because nobody had found the right way in yet. That stuck.
Then I did an exchange year in the US, tutoring French and Spanish. Same story in a different system. Capable students, not enough support. I came back and decided to train properly as a teacher. PGCE through the UK Ministry of Education, IB training, years in classrooms across three countries.
But the UAE was where it really crystalized for me. I’d never seen anything like it. This extraordinary mix of families from every corner of the world, all navigating different curricula, different languages, different systems, often all at once. I was teaching in international schools, building real relationships with other educators, and I kept thinking, these families need something that doesn’t exist yet. Something personal. Something that actually follows the student, not the other way around. That’s where the idea for Edukko came from.
“These families need something that doesn’t exist yet. Something personal. Something that follows the student, not the other way around.”
What makes your approach to education different from traditional methods?
The honest answer is that most platforms are marketplaces. They connect a student with a tutor and then largely step back. What we’ve built is different. It’s a managed experience from start to finish.
Every student at Edukko gets a Learning Manager. Not an algorithm, a person. Someone who listens, who understands what the student needs emotionally and academically, and who stays involved throughout. We do a proper diagnostic before anything starts. We help students choose their Edukkator. They have genuine say in that, because if you don’t trust your tutor, you won’t tell them what you don’t understand.
Then every online session is live monitored. We track engagement in real time. Parents get a written report at the end of every month. Real comments, real feedback, not a template. And everything is one-to-one. We don’t do group sessions. The lesson is built around that specific student on that specific day.
I spent fifteen years watching what works in a classroom. What we’ve done with Edukko is take the best parts of that, the relationship, the accountability, the adaptability, and make it work at scale. That’s the goal, anyway. We’re still building.
“We spent fifteen years watching what works in a classroom. What we’ve done with Edukko is take the best parts of that and make it work at scale.”
What impact have you seen your programmes have on students’ academic and personal growth?
There’s one student I think about a lot. She came to us in her MYP years, bright but really struggling to find her feet in the IB system. We worked with her steadily. Right Edukkator, right pace, adjusted as she went. She finished the Diploma with some of the highest grades in her year.
And then she didn’t leave. She came back for university support. And then again for ongoing mentorship. She’s booked hundreds of sessions with us now over several years. When a family does that, when they keep coming back, keep trusting you with their child’s education, that tells you more than any metric ever could.
Something else I’ve started doing that I’m genuinely proud of. I’ve been bringing some of my former students back as interns and work placement students at Edukko. Kids I taught years ago, now at university, stepping into the professional world. I want to keep walking alongside them. Teaching doesn’t have to stop when they leave school, and for me it never really has.
And then there’s the bigger picture. We’re in eight countries now. My wife Mina is an Iraqi entrepreneur, and through her I’ve seen firsthand what the appetite for quality education looks like in Iraq. Talented young people everywhere, not enough access to the support they deserve. That’s the next frontier for us.
“Teaching doesn’t have to stop when they leave school. For me, it never really has.”
What advice would you give to parents who want to support their child’s learning outside the classroom?
Don’t wait. That’s the first thing. The moment something feels off, a school report, a comment from a teacher, your child coming home deflated, act on it. It almost never gets better on its own.
The second thing is harder to say, but I think it matters. A grade is just a number. Some of the most important things your child is learning right now will never show up in a mark. Critical thinking. Resilience. The ability to sit with something they don’t understand and keep trying. Don’t let the number become the whole conversation at home.
Give them a voice. Ask them what they think they need, not just what you think they should do. Have an honest conversation once a week, and listen more than you talk. Be their biggest supporter, not the extra pressure on top of everything else they’re already carrying. And if you’re not sure where to start, that’s what we’re there for.
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