How do I customise ChatGPT? Personalise AI for home education support

ChatGPT can now be customised far beyond a single set of instructions. Here’s how to adjust its tone, memory and responses so it works more naturally for your family and the way you home educate.

If you use ChatGPT regularly for home education, spending a few minutes on the personalisation settings can make it considerably more useful. Instead of repeatedly explaining that you are in the UK, that you prefer home education rather than homeschooling, or that your child hates worksheets but will happily spend an afternoon researching spiders, you can give ChatGPT some of that context once.

The personalisation options have changed quite a lot since I first first wrote this guide in 2025. You can now choose a general personality, adjust specific characteristics, add your own instructions and, if you choose to use Memory, allow ChatGPT to build up relevant context from previous conversations.

You absolutely do not need to use all of these features. But used thoughtfully, they can make the difference between generic AI suggestions and something that actually fits your family.

ChatGPT changes fairly regularly, so menu names and available features can vary slightly by device, account and app version. This guide was last checked in September 2026.

Where are ChatGPT’s personalisation settings?

On the web, select your profile icon and look for Personalization in Settings. On mobile, open Settings and look for Personalization or Customize ChatGPT, depending on your version of the app. OpenAI currently groups several different controls around personalisation, including Base style and tone, Characteristics, Custom Instructions and Memory.

They do slightly different jobs.

Choose a base style and tone

ChatGPT now lets you choose a general personality, described in Settings as Base style and tone. This changes how ChatGPT tends to communicate rather than what it knows or what it is capable of doing.

For example, you might prefer responses that are friendly and conversational, very concise, or more formal and professional. Changing this setting applies across your chats, although instructions you give in an individual conversation can still change the tone for that particular task. For home education, I would not worry too much about finding the “perfect” personality. Choose the one that feels least irritating to you. That sounds flippant, but genuinely matters when you are going to be reading a lot of its responses. You can then do the more useful fine-tuning with your own instructions.

Adjust ChatGPT’s characteristics

This is one of the more useful additions since the original version of this article. Under Characteristics, ChatGPT can be nudged towards more or less:

warmth
enthusiasm
headings and lists
emoji use.

These controls work alongside your chosen personality and Custom Instructions. For a busy home educating parent, that can be surprisingly useful.

If you find AI responses unbearably enthusiastic, turn the enthusiasm down.

If every answer arrives as fifteen bullet points and six headings, reduce the formatting.

If you want warmer, more conversational explanations for a child, you can increase warmth.

It is a small thing, but getting rid of the parts of AI writing that annoy you makes it much nicer to use.

Custom Instructions are still the most useful bit

Custom Instructions let you explicitly tell ChatGPT what you want it to take into account when responding.

OpenAI currently says these instructions apply immediately across chats, including existing conversations. On web and desktop they are found under Settings → Personalization → Custom Instructions.

For home educating families, this is where I would put the preferences that remain fairly consistent. For example:

We are a home educating family in England. Use British English and the term home education rather than homeschooling.

Keep explanations clear, practical and age appropriate. Do not assume learning needs to follow the National Curriculum or a school timetable.

We prefer flexible, interest-led learning with a mixture of informal learning and structured work where useful.

Suggest UK resources where possible and use metric measurements.

Avoid turning every interest into a worksheet or formal lesson. Give practical suggestions that can be adapted rather than rigid daily schedules.

When suggesting educational resources, tell me if they are paid, subscription based or US-focused.

You can make yours much shorter than that. The point is not to write a manifesto. It is to remove the things you repeatedly find yourself explaining.

Tell it how you actually home educate

This is where personalisation becomes much more useful than simply asking ChatGPT to “act as a home education expert”. Families home educate very differently. You might say:

We follow a fairly autonomous approach. Suggest possibilities rather than fixed lesson plans.

Or:

We prefer a predictable weekly routine and my child works best when tasks are clearly broken into steps.

Or:

We use formal maths and English resources but follow interests for most other subjects.

Or:

My teenager prefers computer-based work and dislikes crafts and worksheets.

Those instructions tell ChatGPT something concrete about what will actually be useful. “Make this suitable for home education” is much vaguer.

You can include interests too

Knowing a child’s interests can be particularly helpful when you are looking for ways into a subject. If your child likes mythology, trains, Minecraft, birds, horror films or horses, you can say so. Then a request such as:

Give me five ways to introduce ratios.

might produce ideas connected to things they already care about rather than another page of imaginary pizzas being sliced into fractions.

You do not need to put every passing obsession into your permanent settings. For short-lived interests, simply mention them in the conversation.

Be cautious with personal information about children

I would be selective about what you store in permanent personalisation. ChatGPT does not need your child’s full name, school history, date of birth, address or detailed medical information in order to suggest a science activity. Usually something like:

My 13-year-old prefers visual explanations and finds long written tasks difficult.

is enough. You can give more context in an individual conversation when it genuinely matters.

This is particularly worth thinking about when discussing children’s health, diagnoses, difficult family circumstances or anything else you would regard as private. Useful personalisation should reduce repetition, not become a family dossier.

Memory is different from Custom Instructions

This distinction is worth understanding. Custom Instructions are things you deliberately tell ChatGPT to follow.

Memory allows ChatGPT, when enabled, to build up useful context from your conversations and other available sources so you do not necessarily have to keep repeating yourself. OpenAI says Memory can draw on relevant context from past chats and, depending on the account and features available, other sources such as files or connected apps. You can review what ChatGPT is remembering through the Memory section in Settings → Personalization.

For home ed this might mean ChatGPT gradually remembers that:

your teenager is working towards particular qualifications

one child prefers practical learning

you are already using a particular maths resource

you have previously rejected a certain approach

you prefer UK resources.

That continuity can be genuinely handy. It is also optional. You can turn Memory off if you would rather each conversation stand more independently.

Check your Memory occasionally

If you do use Memory, it is worth reviewing it now and again. Children change. The resource they loved at ten may be unbearable at thirteen. The GCSE plan you discussed six months ago may have been abandoned. Your beautifully organised morning routine may have lasted until approximately the second Tuesday.

OpenAI now provides a Memory summary where you can review and correct information being used to personalise responses. That is useful because stale personalisation can be worse than none at all. If ChatGPT keeps suggesting something based on an outdated assumption, correct it rather than repeatedly working around it.

What if you don’t want a conversation remembered?

Temporary Chat can be useful for one-off conversations you do not want added to your normal chat history or used to create new memories. OpenAI updated Temporary Chat in August 2026 so some users can choose between a personalised temporary conversation, which can use existing personalisation without creating new memories, and a non-personalised one that does not use those settings. The feature is being rolled out, so what you see may depend on your account.

This can be useful for conversations that are particularly private, completely unrelated to your normal work, or simply not something you want influencing future responses.

Give different instructions for different jobs

Your permanent settings do not need to do everything. You can still tell ChatGPT what you want in an individual conversation. For example:

Explain photosynthesis to a 12-year-old who already understands basic plant cells. Keep it conversational and use an analogy, but don’t make it childish.

Or:

We’re visiting Exeter tomorrow. Give me five history questions we could investigate while we’re there. No worksheets.

Or:

My teenager hates being given a big project. Break this GCSE biology topic into 20-minute tasks.

Specific instructions in the conversation will usually be more useful than trying to anticipate every possible situation in your permanent settings.

Ask ChatGPT to adapt something you already have

One of the best uses of AI for home education is not asking it to invent an entire curriculum. It is adaptation. You can give it:

a worksheet that is too difficult

a long explanation that needs simplifying

a topic your child finds boring

a list of GCSE objectives

a museum itinerary

a book chapter

your own rough activity idea.

Then ask it to reshape that material around the child. For example:

Turn this into three short activities for a teenager who prefers digital work and gets overwhelmed by long written tasks.

Or:

Keep all the science content but replace the worksheet questions with discussion, drawing and one practical activity.

That tends to produce much more useful results than “Plan my child’s education”.

ChatGPT can still get things wrong

Personalisation makes ChatGPT more relevant. It does not make it automatically correct. This matters particularly for:

home education law

GCSE and IGCSE specifications

exam arrangements

college admissions

SEND guidance

medical questions

current prices and services.

For anything important or time-sensitive, ask for sources and double-check the original information yourself. A beautifully personalised wrong answer is still a wrong answer. For home education law in particular, I would use AI to help explain official guidance, not as the authority replacing it.

You can personalise how ChatGPT looks too

If by “customise” you literally mean how ChatGPT looks, there are now visual options too.

Under Settings → General, the web and Windows versions currently offer light, dark or system appearance settings, along with accent colours. Some platforms also offer contrast controls. Available options vary by device and rollout. This has nothing particularly educational about it. But if you spend an embarrassing portion of your life staring at ChatGPT, you may as well make the place tolerable.

My suggested Custom Instructions for UK home educators

If you want something you can simply copy and edit, start here:

I am a home educating parent in the UK. Use British English, metric measurements and the term home education rather than homeschooling unless referring to an American source.

Give practical, realistic suggestions rather than trying to recreate school at home. Do not assume we follow the National Curriculum unless I say so.

Prioritise flexible approaches that can be adapted to my child’s interests, age and learning preferences. Include informal, practical, creative and outdoor learning where relevant.

Keep explanations clear and natural. Avoid unnecessary jargon, exaggerated praise and patronising language.

When recommending resources, prioritise options available in the UK and tell me when something costs money or requires a subscription.

For legal, exam, policy or other time-sensitive information, use current reliable sources and make it clear when I should check official guidance.

Then add only the family details that genuinely make a difference:

My child is 14 and enjoys science fiction, drawing and unusual science.

That is useful. Their full personal history probably is not.

Personalisation should save you work

The best ChatGPT setup is not the one with the longest instructions or the cleverest prompt. It is the one that means you spend less time saying:

No, UK home education.

No, we don’t need a school timetable.

No, I don’t want fourteen worksheets.

Please stop suggesting everything as a “fun family challenge”.

Give it enough context to understand how you work. Correct it when that context changes. Then use the individual conversation to tell it what you need today. That is where personalisation becomes genuinely useful for home education, rather than another piece of technology to configure and then forget about.