Minischooling and Flexischooling

I like Charles Leadbeater – he’s done much to try and shift thinking about education and schooling. His work on personalisation has been helpful. On 8th July John Crace wrote an article in the Guardian entitled  ‘Blue skies learning’ http://education.guardian.co.uk/schools/story/0,,2289561,00.html He looked at Charles’ Twenty One Ideas for Twenty First Century Education and one of the foci was the idea of minischooling. The article is well worth reading. 

It’s also a timely reminder that our own Roland Meighan and Philip Toogood  were expanding the virtues of this way back in the late 1980s. Indeed, Philip put this into practice as heateacher of a large comprehensive school in Shropshire and he wrote ‘Minischooling – A manual’ in 1990. It is still a classic and practical resource. What it also brought to the educational world was the notion of minischooling and small schooling being underpinned by flexischooling. Roland wrote ‘Flexischooling – Education for tomorrow, starting today’ in 1988 and made possible the growing number of families who have managed to negotiate Flexischooling for their children.

At a time when some schools like Cramlington (featured in the article) and others that inspired Leadbeater’s report are beginning to think differently that educational world gave Flexischooling  more attention. The possibilities for really transforming schools are strong.