An increasing number of children in the UK are unhappy in mainstream education. Government education policies over the last decade or so have seen increasing numbers of schools in England adopt increasingly coercive, rigid and strict behaviour policies while at the same time reducing break times and reducing or eliminating curriculum time for the arts and practical subjects in favour of strictly academic subjects and stressful terminal exams that young people themselves are given little voice in.
More children than ever before are becoming deeply unhappy in schools in which they feel they will be punished for being themselves. Children’s mental health is declining, demand for support services is at breaking point and government is showing little willingness to address one of the root causes of this unhappiness – schools themselves.
For over 100 years Summerhill School has offered an alternative, progressive option for children and their families that allows kids to be themselves and to grow at their own pace.
Summerhill is unlike a conventional school as it could possibly be, but some of the key differences to most state schools that make Summerhill such a unique place to be a child include
The freedom to attend lessons on your own terms
Summerhill is well staffed with professional, hard working teachers, small group sizes and the classroom environment itself looks very similar to most schools; but the choice as to which lessons kids attend lies entirely with each individual. Kids might choose to exercise this freedom to take some time out of the classroom to focus on other interests, to play with friends and build relationships or just to lie under a tree and read.
Equality
The Summerhill community is one of equals and the adults aren’t set above the kids. Staff are expected to respect the community rules just the same way as anyone else and are addressed using their first names. Unlike in most schools, adults do not have the automatic power to decide day to day rules or to impose punishments and have no stronger formal authority than anyone else at the school. The school community has a number of established processes for dealing with conflict – the most obvious one being our famous school meeting where we all have an equal vote on our laws and any actions we might choose to take to deal with issues as they come up.
No School Uniform
At Summerhill you can wear what you like. What clothes someone chooses to wear is their own personal choice, so you can dye your hair blue and come to lessons in a Pokémon onesie if that’s what you want to do (although most people tend to go for something a little more comftorable).
No fixed criteria for success
While the vast majority of Summerhill kids will choose to sit standard GCSE exams during their time at the school (and further study is a very common next step), the school community does not place any greater or lesser value on any particular type of learning. As kids get older, everyone is assigned an “after Summerhill advisor” to help guide their decisions on what they might choose to do when they leave and what steps they’ll have to take to achieve those goals – but what those goals are is something each individual has to decide for themselves. Summerhill does not force kids to endure years of heavy academic prep and the heavy stresses of a packed exam schedule just for the sake of it.
Community Living
Summerhill is a community of different people who all live and work together. The school is primarily a boarding school, although we do accept day kids, and the size of the community means that everyone is far more than just a number. We all know each other and we all get lots of practical experience, in a very kind and supportive environment, at learning to listen to, compromise and respect each other. Small class sizes and lots of contact between adults and kids also means that everyone is supported and cared for as an individual – but will nevertheless be expected to follow our core philosophy of freedom not licence.