The Self-Managed Learning (SML) College caters for up to 42, 9 to 16-year-olds who are not in school. The students have chosen not to be in school for a wide variety of reasons. In some cases, because parents want to use a different approach to school and in other cases young people found school impossible, due to bullying, their autism or other factors producing increased stress and anxiety.
In the College students are supported within a learning community of 36 students and a number of adults so that they learn whatever they want in whatever ways they want and to meet whatever needs they personally identify. There are no classrooms, there is no imposed curriculum or dress code and students create their own timetables.
This is sometimes described as being less structured than school, but we rather see it as providing a different kind of structure. I will mention three particular structures that are central to our way of working.
Learning community
First, there is a learning community of all the young people and supporting adults. There is a community meeting every morning when students arrive. We sit around in a circle with everyone on equal terms. In order to ensure that equality, the chairing occurs by rotation so it could be a nine-year-old or a 16-year-old chairing the meeting. The agenda is decided by students and staff and anyone can raise anything they want in the meeting. When students first arrive with us we spend a lot of time developing the community, for instance, the rules are created by the community collaboratively and policed by the community.
Learning agreement