15 Ways to Reimagine Education

Raise the school starting age. Read more…
Prioritise play. Read more…
Place students in mixed age groups with mixed abilities. Read more…
Eradicate standardised tests which put pupils (and teachers) under unnecessary pressure. Read more…
Value creativity and innovation. Read more…
Prioritise mental health and wellbeing. Read more…
Practice democracy and mutual respect between staff and pupils. Read more…
Value self-directed education. Read more…
Broaden the National Curriculum. Read more…
Reduce the amount of time spent at school. Read more…
Enhance teacher training to equip teachers for the job. Read more…
Reduce class/school sizes. Read more…
Facilitate parent/teacher collaboration. Read more…
Equip students with the skills needed for adulthood and the workplace. Read more…
The education system is outdated. Create a new model for the 21^st century. Read more…

Is Schooling in Breach of Children’s Human Rights?

There is a growing dissatisfaction with our state education system, as reflected by the number of changes people are calling for outlined above. Many people believe that conventional schooling is in fact in conflict with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Read more…

Alternatives to School – a 15 minute talk by Carol Black, Director of Schooling the World and Education Analyst. She imagines what it could be like “if we allowed our schools to operate the way human beings have structured their social learning relationships for 100,000 years, based in freedom, autonomy, consent and cooperation, instead of compulsion and control”.

Changing Our Minds: How Children Can Take Control of their Own Learning, by Dr Naomi Fisher

Self Managed Learning and the New Educational Paradigm, by Dr Ian Cunningham

Free to Learn, by Peter Gray

Beyond Coercive Education. A Plea for the Realisation of the Rights of the Child in Education, by Peter Hartkamp

How Children Learn, by John Holt

How Children Fail, by John Holt

Learning All the Time, by John Holt

In Defense of Childhood. Protecting Kids’ Inner Wildness, by Chris Mercogliano

Toxic Childhood. How the Modern World is Damaging our Children and What we can do About It, by Sue Palmer

Raising Cain. Protecting the Emotional Life of Boys, by Dan Kindlon & Michael Thompson

Teacher: One Woman’s Struggle to Keep the Heart in Teaching, by Gabbie Stroud

Freedom to Learn: A View of What Education Might Become, by Carl Rogers