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Summerhill General Policy Statement
1. To provide choices and opportunities
that allows children to develop at their own pace and to follow
their own interests.
Summerhill does not aim to produce specific types of young people,
with specific, assessed skills or knowledge, but aims to provide
an environment in which children can define who they are and
what they want to be.
2. To allow children to be free from compulsory or imposed
assessment, allowing them to develop their own goals and sense
of achievement. Children should be free from the pressure
to conform to artificial standards of success based on predominant
theories of child learning and academic achievement.
3. To allow children to be completely free to play as much
as they like.
Creative and imaginative play is an essential part of childhood
and development. Spontaneous, natural play should not be undermined
or redirected by adults into a "learning experience"
for children. Play belongs to the child.
4. To allow children to experience the full range of feelings
free from the judgement and intervention of an adult.
Freedom to make decisions always involves risk and requires
the possibility of negative outcomes. Apparently negative consequences
such as boredom, stress, anger, disappointment and failure are
a necessary part of individual development.
5. To allow children to live in a community that supports
them and that they are responsible for; in which they have
the freedom to be themselves, and have the power to change community
life, through the democratic process.
All individuals create their own set of values based on the
community within which they live. Summerhill is a community,
which takes responsibility for itself. Problems are discussed
All members of the community, adults and children, irrespective
of age, are equal in terms of this process.
> Summerhill policy >
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