The unfavourable statistics continue to pile up: they begin education the earliest, they are the most tested, they spend the most days in school and, in most cases, they are in the largest classes. Judging by these recent findings by the National Foundation for Educational Research and National University of Ireland in Cork, it is hard not to feel sorry for the average UK state-educated child.
The above stats may also point to reasons behind a sudden increase in interest regarding alternative education in this country, something which has been steadily, but unremarkably, risen over the last twenty years but is now experiencing somewhat of a boom. Over 50,000 children are now home educated in the UK, while there are increasing numbers of Steiner schools, Montessori Schools and small community schools cropping up all over the country.
These forms of alternative schools have their own differences. Steiner schools encourage learning only through play until a child is seven and believe that children should write before they can read. Montessori education is characterised by multi-age classrooms and special learning materials to isolate each learning quality individually. Small community schools model their beliefs around the principles of Human Scale Education, committed to small scale learning communities based on the values of democracy, fairness and respect.
However, the overriding common factor of these schools is that they all serve to nurture every part of the child – creative, emotional, moral, spiritual as well as intellectual and physical – providing a holistic education by encouraging pupils to choose their own course of learning and not to get tied down to the sole aim of achieving academic success. Subsequently, and perhaps most importantly for parents these days, there are no tests and exams, just learning for the sake of learning.
Dr Richard House – a well-established lecturer in psychotherapy and counselling, a Steiner school teacher for early years, a patron of Human Scale Education, and co-author of last year’s much-discussed open letter to the press regarding ‘toxic childhood’ – refers to alternative schools as ‘socially progressive’ and highlights the increasingly common viewpoint that state schools provide neither the human touch nor the freedom to compliment a pupil’s personal attributes.
‘Socially progressive schools maximise the likelihood of children growing up to have a responsible and mature understanding of freedom, and therefore being able to exercise it effectively and maturely in their lives,’ says Dr House. ‘This contrasts with mainstream schooling, which increasingly seems geared towards to churning out people who will preserve the status quo and fit into the existing system.’
To some parents the idea of a ‘socially progressive’ school may sound like an excuse for kids to do what they like and play around all day, but Phillip Martyn, a teacher at the Steiner Waldorf School of South West London, refutes this suggestion as a grave misconception.
‘It is not at all a free and easy education,’ he says. ‘Steiner set out the curriculum approach, which the schools follow, indicating what subjects should be introduced at various ages. The major difference is that the children do not start reading and writing until they are seven, which is of course normal in many parts of the world other than UK with its particular emphasis on early learning.’
And Mr Martyn says that pupils of alternative schools should have no problem integrating into further education: ‘In the SW London School we go through to 14, which is the beginning of the work for GCSEs. Our children pass easily into other schools and are appreciated because they can deal with adults in a mature way.
‘In terms of what the children go on to do, they succeed like everybody else,’ he continues. ‘The retired general counsel of ICI was a former Steiner school pupil and the head of American Express in America is a former Steiner student, too. What you need in life to get on is an analytical ability, which of course you learn in mainstream education, but you also need the imagination, confidence and ability to deal with people.’
The downside to alternative education is that it receives no funding from the state sector, and therefore the vast majority require private funding or charitable donations. A lack of interest from the Government may also explain a lack of empirical evidence proving or disproving the virtues of alternative education.
However, evidence conducted in the US – where there are already 5,000 Montessori schools – compared Montessori and state-educated children and showed that in the early years Montessori children performed better on standardised tests of reading and maths, engaged in more positive interaction in the playground, and showed more advanced social cognition and executive control.
They also showed more concern for fairness and justice. At the end of elementary school, Montessori children wrote more creative essays with more complex sentence structures, selected more positive responses to social dilemmas, and reported feeling more of a sense of community at their school.
As interest in alternative education continues to increase, the Government is now being forced to sit up and take notice of schools that encourage learning through play, with the hope that they may learn something themselves.
In the meantime, state-funding for alternative schools will remain a cause for debate while the revolution against round-the-clock testing gathers pace.
