A.S.Neill Summerhill CIC

10/08/2026

A great opportunity to join the Summerhill community as a Primary Teacher.

✨ Join our community ✨

A wonderful opportunity to join our school as a Primary Teacher! 👩‍🏫

Apply by 24th September, 2026
Start date January: 13th January, 2027

Summerhill is a unique school where learning is done differently, and education is rooted in care, freedom and responsibility.

Find out more, including the full job description, here:

🔗 https://mynewterm.com/jobs/124870/EDV-2026-SS-84900

04/08/2026

Thinking about the role of the adult in children's lives?

The Role of the Adult (ROTA), is back for the Autumn 2026 cohort - running September to November, live and online.

5 modules. over 30 hours live + 20 hours independent learning. Led by Henry Readhead, Anie and James.

We explore what children actually need from adults - play, equality, freedom, sincerity - and how to step back without stepping away.

It's hands-on, reflective, and (if past participants are anything to go by) genuinely transformative.

For educators, therapists, parents, and home educators.

Instalment plans available. Concessionary rates for students, parents, and lower incomes - just email us for a form.

Booking and full course info here:
https://www.asneillsummerhillcic.co.uk/online-course-overview-role-of-the-adult-2025/

23/07/2026

Over a hundred years ago, A.S. Neill saw something most of us have stopped questioning.

We’ve inherited the idea that children must be trained into endurance, and somewhere along the way, we started calling it love.

“Toughen them up.”
“Life isn’t fair.”
“They need to learn to cope.”

Not every child is visibly struggling. Some seem to take it in their stride.

But “fine” can be a performance, a face children learn to wear to get through the day. The cost may still be there, whether anyone sees it or not.

What if the real world doesn’t actually require this?

What if we’ve simply built a world where the price of getting through is paid quietly, in pieces of ourselves, and then we teach our children to pay it without question?

Neill saw what that cost can look like.

“Free children have open, fearless faces,” he wrote. “Disciplined children look cowed, miserable, fearful.”

He wasn’t talking about bad parents. He was talking about all of us, about a culture that has confused conformity with strength.

There is another way.

It’s what Summerhill has been demonstrating for more than a hundred years, and it’s what we’re here to share: children who are trusted rather than hardened grow into adults who don’t need to be broken to become strong.

Our next Role of the Adult course starts in September.

Join us for over 30 hours of live sessions exploring Summerhill’s practices and core values, while drawing meaningful connections with progressive psychological theories and contemporary research.

Together, we’ll examine what it really means to support children through trust, freedom, and respectful relationships - and how these ideas remain as relevant today as ever.

14/07/2026

It's not you & it's not your child.

It's a system that decided long ago what a "good" pupil looks like, and left everyone else feeling like the problem.

If your child has had a hard time at school, chances are you've spent a lot of nights replaying it, trying to work out what you could have done differently. Did I push too hard, or not hard enough. Is it something about them. Is it something about me.

You were handed that story too, and told it was your job to make your child match it.

For over 100 years, Summerhill School has started from a different place. Happiness and wellbeing aren't rewards for successful learning - they're the foundation learning grows from.

So often, what looks like a child "not coping" is simply a child who doesn't fit a system that was never built with them in mind.

Instead, Summerhill begins with trust.

Trust that children are more than a set of grades.

Trust that relationships matter.

Trust that when young people are given space, respect and genuine freedom, they grow into themselves - rather than into someone else's idea of who they should be.

Summerhill school is a place where a child gets to be trusted, and a parent gets the space to breathe.

Perhaps the future of education has been here all along.

10/07/2026

The power of community.

Imagine if we spent as much time building communities of trust in schools as we do designing classrooms.

In schools like Summerhill, the emphasis is on relationships rather than hierarchy. Children aren’t expected to rely on a single teacher or one designated space for support.

They might seek out a house parent, chat with someone in the library, spend time with friends, or simply find the adult they feel understands them in that moment.

What makes a community feel safe isn’t one exceptional person.

It’s a network of relationships.

Children know there are many adults they can trust, and just as importantly, they have the freedom to choose who they turn to. Different people offer different kinds of support, and that choice matters.

There’s an important safeguarding principle here too.

When care is shared across a community, it naturally reduces the power held by any one adult. Responsibility is distributed rather than concentrated, creating a healthier and safer culture for everyone.

Real emotional security and genuine autonomy grow from this kind of environment—not by encouraging dependence on a single trusted adult, but by giving children a tribe of trusted people and the confidence to navigate those relationships for themselves.

Perhaps that’s one of the greatest strengths of a true educational community.

08/07/2026

The Role of the Adult:

The "secret" isn't a curriculum or a rulebook.

It’s adults doing the hard, uncomfortable work of regulating themselves.

You can’t offer a child genuine autonomy if, underneath it all, you’re terrified of them making a mistake, taking a risk, or pushing a boundary.

Real freedom requires absolute sincerity, and sincerity is much harder to maintain than authority.

A.S. Neill saw it clearly: The function of the child is to live his own life - not the life that his anxious parents think he should live.

In the ROTA course, we keep circling back to this exact tension: the adult's role isn't to manage the risk, but to manage themselves in the risk.

For me, that's the cornerstone of a relationship-centred approach.

For parents and educators out there: what's the hardest part for you when it comes to stepping back and letting a child navigate a risk on their own terms?

06/07/2026

Re-reading some recent consultancy proposals reminds me just how hard it is to create spaces that genuinely put childhood first - free play, emotional wellbeing, community and trust.

The kinds of things that are often spoken about, but much harder to actually build into everyday reality.

Many of the participants on our course are running projects like this, starting new ones, or are in the planning stages of setting up their own school or community project.

Like so many grassroots efforts, they're pouring their own time, energy and resources into creating something they believe children truly need.

It made me reflect on how much courage it takes to swim against the current. The conventional education system is deeply established, and building something that prioritises children's autonomy, happiness and emotional health often means taking the harder road.

And yet I can't help but feel this is where some of the most meaningful change is happening - not through grand reforms, but through small communities reimagining what education can be.

If you're building an alternative space for children, or trying to create a more humane way of learning: keep going. The work is difficult. It can feel lonely. But it matters.

One of the participants from our course is now at exactly that stage - creating a democratic educational environment in nature for children aged 3 to 14, with a coworking space and animal sanctuary near Valencia.

If you're in the area and able to get involved, I've attached their promotional material in the comments.

This isn't a formal recommendation from us - it's us sharing a project that reflects the values and ethics we hold when it comes to creating educational spaces centred on the happiness and wellbeing of the child.

01/07/2026

Applications are OPEN: The Role of the Adult - Autumn 2026 Cohort!

What actually changes when an adult stops managing children and starts trusting them?

That's the heart of The Role of the Adult (ROTA) - our flagship online CPD course, rooted in over 100 years of lived democratic education at Summerhill School.

This isn't theory borrowed from a textbook. It's practice, tried and tested with real children, shared by the people who live it every day.

📅 Runs September - November 2026 | Live & online.

Across five modules we explore the ideas that make freedom work in practice: 🔹 Freedom, not licence - the foundations of A.S. Neill's philosophy 🔹 Play, equality & the child's right to be themselves 🔹 Sincerity, boundaries & looking after yourself in the process 🔹 Freedom from expectation - the psychology of why control backfires 🔹 Following the child - autonomy, risk-taking & relationship-centred practice

Who it's for: educators, school leaders, therapists, trainee teachers, university students and parents - anyone ready to rethink their relationship with children and young people.

💬 "An inspiring and thought-provoking course that brings Summerhill's philosophy to life, helping adults create more respectful, democratic and meaningful relationships with children. A must for educators seeking real change."

£475, with 2- and 3-instalment payment plans available.

Concessionary rates available - we never want cost to be the barrier. If you're a student, parent or on a lower income, apply for a reduced place and we'll do our best to help.

Course details & booking 👉 https://www.asneillsummerhillcic.co.uk/online-course-overview-role-of-the-adult-2025/ Questions or to request the concession form 👉 [email protected]

Come and learn how freedom really works. 🌍

DOWNLOAD OVERVIEW PDF JOIN US OR REQUEST MORE INFO To register your interest or to enquire about any special arrangements you may like to discuss Feel free to Request further information please get in…

05/05/2026

Hi Everyone,

It's been a while - exam season has, as always, been a tad chaotic. Lots of kids wanting last-minute help and revision for GCSEs.

I always feel mixed about this time of year. I'm genuinely proud of the progress students have made - some of them have come on leaps and bounds over the past years/months. But, and this is the Summerhill bit, I can't help thinking about all the kids who've been pushed through a system they never consented to. A system designed for the "standard kid" - not the brightest, not the ones who struggle most. Just the middle.

Some come out feeling they weren't good enough. Others come out never having been stretched, never reaching their true potential.

At Summerhill, every student has ownership of their own decisions. They choose to study Science, or English, or whatever it may be. They've always been in control of their own lives. Not to mention that the teaching is genuinely bespoke, every lesson adapted to accomodate each and every student.

What I see more and more now, especially with 16-18 year olds, is young people who have never once been asked "What do you want?" or "How do you feel?" There's an energy in them they don't know what to do with.

They don't understand why they spent 10+ years in a system that taught them to sit still, not be creative unless directed to be - and now they leave with a pocket full of paper saying they can read and write, but no real understanding of themselves or the world around them.

As A.S. Neill wrote: "They know a lot; they may shine in dialectics; they can quote the classics - but in their outlook on life many of them are infants. For they have been taught to know, but have not been allowed to feel."

The system goes on, separating the head from the heart. And it's the young people who pay the price...

28/04/2026

Hi Everyone,

We just wanted to help spread the word!

Henry Readhead, alongside a number of other inspiring speakers, will be taking part in the International Symposium on Anarchist and Libertarian Principles of Education, hosted by the University of Burgos.

This online event offers a space for dialogue, reflection, and exchange on alternative educational practices, bringing together voices from across Europe and beyond.

-7 May 2026
- 16:30–19:30 CET
- Online via Zoom
- Free to attend (certificate included)

If you are interested in freedom in education, child-centred learning, democratic schools, or new ways of thinking about education, this looks like a really worthwhile event.

Please see the poster for registration details, and feel free to share with anyone who may be interested.