Progressive education, or educational progressivism, is a pedagogical movement that began in the late 19th century and has persisted in various forms to the present. In Europe, progressive education took the form of the New Education Movement. The term progressive was engaged to distinguish this education from the traditional curricula of the 19th century, which was rooted in classical preparation for the early-industrial university and strongly differentiated by social class. By contrast, progressive education finds its roots in modern, post-industrial experience. Most progressive education programs have these qualities in common:
Summerhill School is an independent day and boarding school in Leiston, Suffolk, England. It was founded in 1921 by Alexander Sutherland Neill with the belief that the school should be made to fit the child, rather than the other way around. It is run as a democratic community and is considered a Democratic School; the running of the school is conducted in the school meetings, which anyone, staff or pupil, may attend, and at which everyone has an equal vote. These meetings serve as both a legislative and judicial body. Members of the community are free to do as they please, so long as their actions do not cause any harm to others, according to Neill's principle "Freedom, not Licence." This extends to the freedom for pupils to choose which lessons, if any, they attend. It is an example of both democratic education and alternative education.
Education in England is overseen by the Department for Education. Local government authorities are responsible for implementing policy for public education and state-funded schools at a local level. State-funded schools may be selective grammar schools or non-selective comprehensive schools. All state schools are subject to assessment and inspection by the government department Ofsted. England also has private schools and home education; legally, parents may choose to educate their children by any suitable means.
Sir Christopher Anthony Woodhead was a British educationalist. He was Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Schools in England from 1994 to 2000, and was one of the most controversial figures in debates on the direction of English education policy. He was Chairman of Cognita, a company dedicated to fostering private education, from 2004 to 2013.
Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School (EGA), a medium-sized comprehensive secondary school for girls in Islington, London, England, is rated as 'Outstanding' by OFSTED in its most recent inspection report. It is named in honour of Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the first woman to gain a medical qualification in the United Kingdom. EGA's buildings, which are located between King's Cross railway station and Angel Underground station, are named after great women in history, such as Emily Brontë.
Leila Berg was an English children's author, editor and play specialist. She was well known as a journalist and a writer on education and children's rights. Berg was a recipient of the Eleanor Farjeon Award.
John La Rose was a political and cultural activist, poet, writer, publisher, founder in 1966 of New Beacon Books, the first specialist Caribbean publishing company in Britain, and subsequently Chairman of the George Padmore Institute. He was originally from Trinidad and Tobago but was involved in the struggle for political independence and cultural and social change in the Caribbean in the 1940s and 1950s and later in Britain, the rest of Europe and the Third World.
City of London Academy Islington is an 11–18 mixed, secondary school and sixth form with academy status in Islington, Greater London, England. It was established in 1966 and adopted its present name after becoming an academy in September 2008.
Beacon Status was a progressive educational initiative that the United Kingdom implemented based on the idea that organizational learning could be advanced through a competitive process of identifying successful organizations and recruiting them to disseminate their good practices. The beacon status initiative was launched by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) in partnership with the Learning and Skills Council (LSC) in 1998 and ran through to August 2005 for primary and secondary schools in England and Wales. Beacon Status was for providers funded by the Learning and Skills Council, which are mainly Further Education colleges. The Learning and Skills Improvement Service was still awarding Beacon Status in 2011.
St Aloysius' College is a Roman Catholic, boys-only state school in the London Borough of Islington, England. Each year around 180 pupils are admitted to Year 7 on the basis of examination; the local education authority also assigns students without another school to this school. It is the oldest surviving foundation of its kind in the Archdiocese of Westminster.
William Michael Duane was an Irish born, British teacher known for his progressive educational views, his belief in inclusivity and a multi-racial approach, his encouragement of informal relationships between staff and pupils and his opposition to corporal punishment. He was also the head of the controversial short-lived Risinghill School in Islington.
St. Mary's Town and Country School was an independent, non-denominational, co-educational progressive day and boarding school, founded in Belsize Park, London in 1937. It closed at the end of 1982.
City of London Academy Highbury Grove is an 11–18 mixed secondary school with academy status, located in the London Borough of Islington, England. It is part of the City of London Academies Trust.
Plaistow County Grammar School, also known as "Plaistow Grammar" or "PGS", was a local authority mixed gender Grammar school established in 1945 and located on Prince Regent Lane (A112) in Plaistow, in the County Borough of West Ham and then the London Borough of Newham in east London. It was disestablished in 1972 upon its merging to create a Comprehensive school.
Liverpool Collegiate School was an all-boys grammar school, later a comprehensive school, in the Everton area of Liverpool.
A comprehensive school, or simply a comprehensive, typically describes a secondary school for pupils aged approximately 11–16 or 11–18, that does not select its intake on the basis of academic achievement or aptitude, in contrast to a selective school system where admission is restricted on the basis of selection criteria, usually academic performance. In England and Wales comprehensive schools were introduced as state schools on an experimental basis in the 1940s and became more widespread from 1965. They may be part of a local education authority or be a self governing academy or part of a multi-academy trust.
Fifty Years of Freedom: A Study of the Development of the Ideas of A. S. Neill is a 1972 intellectual biography of the British pedagogue A. S. Neill by Ray Hemmings. It traces how Homer Lane, Wilhelm Reich, Sigmund Freud and others influenced Neill as he developed the "Summerhill idea", the philosophy of child autonomy behind his Summerhill School. The book follows Neill's early life and career in rural, Calvinist Scotland and continues through the influence of his mentors, Lane and Reich, and the origins of Summerhill after World War I. Written fifty years from Summerhill's founding, Fifty Years is a sociological and historical analysis of Neill's ideas in the context of intellectual and educational trends both during Neill's life and at the time of publication. Hemmings also surveyed progressive school leaders about Neill's impact on the field and reported their perception of influence on teacher–pupil relations. Fifty Years was first published in England in 1972 by George Allen and Unwin and was later renamed Children's Freedom: A. S. Neill and the Evolution of the Summerhill Idea for its 1973 American publication by Schocken Books.
Leila Rendel OBE was an English social worker, suffragist, and children's campaigner. She was the co-founder of the Caldecott Community, a pioneering boarding school in Kent for distressed and vulnerable children, and served as its director for over 50 years.
The Caldecott Foundation, formerly known as the Caldecott Community, is a UK charity which provides therapeutic care and education for disadvantaged and vulnerable children. It has been based in the Borough of Ashford in Kent since 1947 and operates seven registered children's homes in Kent and Nottinghamshire as well the Caldecott Foundation School.
