Human Scale Education works with schools and parents to promote human scale learning environments where children and young people are known and valued as individuals. HSE believes that ‘humanity of scale’ and the ‘primacy of relationships’ should inform the design of our schools and other public sector services.
Some HSE Schools implementing aspects of HSE philosophy
Sir William Burrough Primary School
A primary school serving the local communities of Tower Hamlets, east London.
An 11-19 school serving students the Borough of Sutton, south London.
A community day school providing education for children and young adults who have profound severe & complex learning difficulties.
For more information refer to the website Human Scale Education and contact via contact@hse.org.uk
Linked History
Our own Philip Toogood and his wife Annabel were involved at the inception of HSE. Philip was invited by the Schumacher Society to co-ordinate a movement to become known as the Human Scale Education Association in 1985, culminating in a three-day international conference in Oxford. This explored the ideas of Minischooling and Flexischooling in a variety of settings including the ‘New York City as School’ and the need to protect small schools and the right to home education. The three main planks of Human Scale Education were:
Small Schools – both the preservation of those in existence as well the development of new ones,
Mini-schooling to humanise large schools,
Flexischooling to link the human scale structures of schools with home-educating families in genuine home-school partnerships.
Although the minischooling and flexischooling aspects of HSE have somewhat disappeared CPE-PEN very much supports these aspects.
Philip and his wife Annabel spent two years working at the Small School at Hartland. They were then asked by parents to re-open the Dame Catherine’s School at Ticknall, Derbyshire, as an independent, parent-cooperative learning centre and all-ages school and base for the development of flexischooling.
