DURBAN - South African born entrepreneur Elon Musk has his own school that he is running out of the offices of SpaceX.
A report from Ars Technica revealed information about the school and that Musk spends close to half a million dollars to run the school according to IRS documents.
The school which Musk co-founded is called Ad Astra and it was initially a school for his five sons but now it has 40 students. Children of SpaceX staff make up about half of the number of students at the school.
Ad Astra which means to the stars in Latin was launched in 2014.
In an interview, Musk said that the school has no grades but instead all of the children aged between 7 and 14 are in the same grade. The kids work together in teams and do get marks for their work but not final reports at the end of a term.
Christina Simon, the author of a guide to the private primary schools in Los Angeles called Beyond the Brochure said that there are people who can afford privates schools in the city but want their child to go to Musk's school.
The most recent admission period saw at least 400 families visit the school in the hopes of securing one of the 12 spots that were available.
According to the report from Ars Technica, every student at the school receives a Mac laptop and there are food trucks for after-school sessions.
Ad Astar curriculum
The school reportedly pays heavy attention to subjects like mathematics, engineering and science.
Joshua Dahn a teacher from California co-founded the school with Musk. According to Dahn, the students learn about artificial intelligence and take online courses on subjects through edX and Khan Academy.
The students are also taught about ethics through hypothetical situations like who is to blame for a factory that has polluted a lake nearby.
Sports, music and foreign languages are not included in the curriculum. Musk believes that technology like real-time translation software will soon make the subject of foreign languages obsolete.
They also get to experiment which applied science much more than at a normal school.
Astra, Ad Astra's own unit of currency has been created to encourage entrepreneurship.
According to Dahn, they host a marketplace called Bazaar three times a year and at the Bazaar kids will have their own companies.