I have heard of you through ESSA, and visited your website. I tried to
contact you directly from the website, but it didn’t seem to work. I have
got your email address from the Phoenix Education Trust.

My impression is that you do not know how many allies you have around the
world - not necessarily agreeing with all your points, but agreeing with
enough to give you some encouragement.

I noticed that someone had suggested you look at the Lumiar website. That’s
just one of many you can find at www.idenetwork.org. I would particularly
recommend Sudbury Valley School’s site, as well as Summerhill and Sands
School in this country. And then I would like you to look at my own site,
www.davidgribble.co.uk, and the Lib Ed website, which publishes collections
of articles three times a year - www.libed.org.uk/articles.

David Gribble

In the 21st century we are still implementing a system that wasn’t ideal even for the 19th century… Despite being in the system as a teacher, then a Primary head and now as an “advisor”, I haven’t really changed my stance of being a “de-schooler” at heart.

Check out the work of Ricardo Semlaer and the Lumiar schools.

Frederick Sandall

I met one guy working for Corus, while researching ‘Creating a Learning Society’, who was being made redundant as not ‘multi-skilled’  and so replaced by a graduate. He had worked for British Steel since leaving school at legal age with no qualifications when jobs in the Welsh valleys were plentiful. He had worked on every process and could diagnose machine faults by sound; the engineers asked him for help. He had 5,000 bedding plants in his garden that he nurtured to give away to friends, had plastered and wired his own house, started an opera/theatre group in his village and reopened and refurbished the local threatre. Etc. Yet he is classified in our learning society as a non-participant. I was in awe of this humble man.

Professor Stephen Gorard

You have arrived at the blog section, now tell us what you think. You will be dealing directly with John Harrison who alone will moderate the blog. So please don’t expect an immediate posting all the time until you are ‘known’ as a serious respondent. John will endeavour to get things posted within 24 hours.