Links

This section includes links to the websites of other organisations and individuals which may be of interest to Centre for Personalised Education – Personalised Education Now members and supporters in their reading and research and to others who may wish to start extend their awareness.

• Democratic Education IDEN  IDEN stands for International Democratic Education Network. It is a network of schools, organisations and individuals all round the world that uphold such ideals as: respect and trust for children, equality of status of children and adults, shared responsibility, freedom of choice of activity, democratic governance by children and staff together, without reference to any supposedly superior guide or system. Members are self-selected. Their names and addresses and a minimal description appear in a data-base on this web site, and they receive two or three newsletters a year, mainly giving information about recent and future International Democratic Education Conferences (IDECs).
• Informal Education and Lifelong Learning – Infed Our aim is to provide a space for people to explore the theory and practice of informal education and lifelong learning. In particular, we want to encourage educators to develop ways of working and being that foster association, conversation and relationship
• Life Learning Magazine (Canada) Life Learning is a bimonthly, reader-written magazine that is a forum for trustworthy, inspiring information and intelligent discussion about self-directed, life-based learning. This type of learning is also sometimes known as “unschooling”, “unstructured  homeschooling” or “natural learning” when it refers to the education of children, but also includes adult learning. We do not discriminate about the age of learners, believing that a learner-directed philosophy of education is valid at any age.
• The 21st Century Learning Initiative  Led by John Abbott their essential purpose is to facilitate the emergence of new approaches to learning that draw upon a range of insights into the human brain, the functioning of human societies, and learning as a community-wide activity. ‘We believe this will release human potential in ways that nurture and form local democratic communities worldwide, and will help reclaim and sustain a world supportive of human endeavour.’
• Campaign for Learning Working to build motivation, create opportunities and provide support for learning in families and communities, workplaces and schools. Key elements of our work are national promotion campaigns, project partnerships, policy and advocacy, publications, events, research and award schemes.
• Alliance for Self-directed Education. Education that derives from the self-chosen activities and life experiences of the person being educated.In everyday language people tend to equate education with schooling, which leads one to think of education as something that is done to students byteachers. Teachers educate and students become educated. Teachers give an education and students receive this gift. But any real discussion of education requires us to think of it as something much broader than schooling.
• PAL  PAL began in 1989 with a Lab for writers for the stage. Since then we have tested and proved our cross-disciplinary experimental process for the development of talent and fostering new work across the arts, media and technology, science and education and cultural leadership.
• The UK Association for Science and Discovery Centres (ASDC) brings together over 60 major science engagement organisations in the UK. Together we strive for a society where people of all ages and backgrounds have an opportunity to enjoy and explore science, and feel a sense of shared ownership over its direction.
• Human Scale Education  Human Scale Education is an education reform movement committed to small scale learning communities based on the values of democracy, fairness and respect. HSE works directly with schools and parents to promote human scale learning environments where children and young people are known and valued as individuals.
• Self Managed Learning College was established as a non-profit organisation in 1994 to develop and promote the wider use of Self Managed Learning (SML) and provide a network giving advice and support to people involved in SML. We have been providing SML programmes for young people at Self Managed Learning College in Brighton for 15 years. The College is a vibrant learning community that offers a real alternative to schooling. We provide a stimulating and nurturing environment where students can develop the confidence and skills they need for the future. Whatever they want to learn a way is found for them to do so. Our students feel well prepared to take the next steps in their careers when they leave the College. Results for students of all abilities have been exceptional, with all of our 16 year olds going on to further education or employment.
• Cooperative Schools.  Co-operative Schools place a high emphasis on schools, teachers and the community working together to provide the best environment they can for young people. The development of young people into active global citizens is at the core of our philosophy. We are unique in that we are both a co-operative but also a network, ‘owned’ by and run for our member schools.
• Lib Ed (Libertarian Education) Lib Ed was formed in 1966 as the Libertarian Teachers Association. It now explores libertarian practice and ideas in education around the world, linking and supporting others with similar ideals, running a website and organising conferences.
• ADEC (Australasian Democratic Education Community) is for all those interested and involved in democratic, progressive, and alternative education. It is for learners and educators regardless of age. It is for all in the community who seek to share and extend their experience and knowledge of such education. We welcome members of like-minded communities to our annual conference which is hosted by member schools.
• AERO  The Alternative Education Resource Organization (AERO) (USA) is a non-profit organization founded in 1989 by education expert Jerry Mintz to advance learner-centred approaches to education. AERO is considered by many to be the primary hub of communications and support for educational alternatives around the world.
• The International Association for Learning Alternatives IALA’s (USA)mission is to lead, promote and support learning alternatives and choice options. This mission signals our interest in seeing that parents and students have choices of educational programs to meet their needs, interests, learning styles and intelligences. We believe that one-size education program does not fit everyone and that education is best served by having choices for all.
• The Planned Environment Therapy Trust promotes and supports therapeutic approaches to the treatment of children and adults who have suffered emotional and psychological hurts. Founded in 1966, the Trust reaches out from our base, the Barns Centre in Gloucestershire, to understand, support, develop and promote planned environment therapy and the therapeutic community approach to working and living; and to preserve the history and heritage of this work and approach both for its own sake, and as a tool for learning.
• Sudbury Valley School (Mass USA)  Much lauded American Free School.
• Summerhill School  Much lauded UK Free school
• Sands School  A democratically run secondary school in Ashburton, Devon, UK
• Efterskole is a unique Danish independent residential school for students between 14 and 18 years old. Presently some 25.000 students attend one of the app. 250 schools throughout Denmark
• Friskoler  Danish private schools. Generally they are small. Vary ideologically and in practice but the majority were established on the theories and principles of Grundtvig and Kold. Friskoleforening.
• Home Education UK  Largest home education website / networks in the UK.
• Education Otherwise  Education Otherwise is a UK-based membership organisation which provides support and information for families whose children are being educated outside school, and for those who wish to uphold the freedom of families to take proper responsibility for the education of their children.
• Ed Yourself. This website is the work of Fiona Nicholson.  Fiona provides a clear up-to-date analysis of the key areas of elective home education practice and policy in England and Wales.
• University of the First Age  The UFA is a national educational charity, that works in partnership to develop the confidence, achievement and potential of young people through extended learning opportunities. UFA has worked with over 750,000 young people, trained 5,000 teachers and youth workers and supported 2,000 schools since we started in 1996. While we continue to learn and develop our programmes our fundamental mission, to develop in a young person leadership characteristics that can dramatically improve their life chances, has not changed.
• Reggio Emilia Approach. The Reggio Emilia Approach is an educational philosophy based on the image of the child, and of human beings, as possessing strong potentials for development and as a subject of rights who learns and grows in the relationships with others.
• Holt Associates GWS . After decades of work as a classroom teacher and school reformer John Holt decided that schooling was not the same as education. Holt’s controversial position as a progressive school reformer in the 1960s changed to that of social reformer in the 1970s—Holt insisted that laws and customs that prevent children and families from learning in the real world should be challenged and that school should be viewed as a convivial learning resource, like a library, rather than a compulsory treatment clinic. A practical philosopher, Holt put his words into action in ways that spurred parents, teachers, and children to support learning without the school apparatus that defines, controls, and predicts learning outcomes.

• Other Education Journal Most academic journals in the field of education focus on institutionalised forms of educational provision, throughout the life-course. Other Education looks at education differently. Our work as authors and readers, as well as editorially speaking, is to enable and enhance movement of education towards the democratic, the autonomous and the socially just. How this is done is, with us, open. We operate as an international academic journal. So, in line with a love of the democratic, our focus is the theory, philosophy and practice of educational alternatives. Educational alternatives signifies alternatives to mainstream practices of education and schooling – home schooling, home education, and de-schooling – and alternative approaches within mainstream practices of education and schooling – alternative conceptions and practices of schooling, democratic schools, student voice, student-centred education, and the like.We consider that the work of scholars writing on educational alternatives is currently too dispersed amongst journals without our focus and vision to create concentrated conversations and the development of meanings on ‘other’ terms. We seek to provide a space that can remedy that aporia. Within this dedicated space to alternatives, in and of education, scholars can generate positive lines of new thought and challenging contributions to any sedimented status quo with force and support of a dedicated audience and editorial team. We also seek work that enhances and refines our understandings of relevant existing work, of which there is a great deal that currently sits without its due attention on ‘other’ terms of value. We don’t yet and perhaps never will – nor should – know what these other terms are but discussing attractive, ugly, difficult, simple, valuable, decidedly useless, weird, ordinary and interesting educational possibilities is a part of our remit. We are not just interested in the successful, the beautiful, the high status, the winners… We serve the marginal, the excluded, the poor, the different and those without a voice.
• Michael Fielding – Radical Education. Michael is committed to exploring and advancing the democratic community school and radical reforms with the learner at their heart.
• 42 PARIS 42 is a private, nonprofit and tuition-free computer programming school created and funded by French billionaire Xavier Niel (Founder of the telecommunication company Illiad) with several partners including Nicolas Sadirac (previous director-general of the Epitech school in France), Kwame Yamgnane and Florian Bucher (former executives of Epitech). The school was first opened in Paris in 2013.Out of more than 70,000 candidates in France, 3,000 were selected to complete a four-week intensive computer programming bootcamp called piscine (swimming-pool). Any person between 18 and 30 can be registered for piscine after completing the logical reasoning tests on the website.
• 42 Silicon Valley  Same concept as 42 Paris exported to USA.