SOME MYTHS AND REALITIES

MYTH No.1: “Summerhill is a small private school that is irrelevant.”

REALITY: Summerhill is world-renowned. A.S. Neill, the school’s founder wrote 18 books, translated into many languages. Today the school continues to be visited by students and educators from all over the world. A.S. Neill received honorary degrees from Exeter, Essex, and Newcastle Universities for his invaluable contributions to education. Summerhill is a private school because no government has offered to fund it!! However, there are democratic schools in other countries based on Summerhill that receive government funding.

MYTH No. 2: “Summerhill is a lawless place where students run amok”

REALITY:Contrary to some public opinion, a “Lord of the Flies” atmosphere does not exist. The School has 230 laws, created by pupils and staff, reviewed each week at the General Meeting - an open and democratic forum attended by the whole school in which each person has 1 vote

MYTH No. 3: “Summerhill is a “do as you like’ school.”

REALITY:Individual freedom at Summerhill is defined by the difference between “freedom” and “licence”. This assumes that one's own freedom does not infringe upon the freedom of anybody else. For example: you can wear what you want, attend which classes you want, say what you want - but you cannot play loud music after silence hour or use somebody’s bicycle without permission.

MYTH No. 4: “Summerhill does not provide an adequate education”

REALITY:Almost all Summerhill pupils take GCSEs, some as young as 13. In 1998, 67% of our school leavers received 5 or more GCSEs at grades A to C, which is well above the national average. In addition, most Summerhill pupils go on to colleges of further education.

MYTH No. 5: “Summerhill students cannot survive in the ‘real’ world”

REALITY: Summerhill alumni enjoy varied careers including: actors, artists, architects, businessmen and women, carers for the handicapped, chefs, carpenters, computer programmers, doctors, dancers, farmers, film makers, gardeners, illustrators, journalists, lawyers, musicians, publicans, photographers, scientists, sound technicians, surgeons, teachers, university professors, writers…..

MYTH No. 6: “Summerhill children are foul mouthed.”

REALITY:The great majority our visitors leave the school impressed with the politeness, friendliness and maturity of our students.

MYTH No. 7: “Summerhill is a school only for dropouts who cannot cope with mainstream schooling.”

REALITY: Summerhill has a diverse range of children with varying backgrounds from many different countries. Summerhill is, above all, a happy school, which builds confidence in individuals, particularly those who have in some way been scarred in other schools before they arrive.

Text 11. Tearaway becomes top of the class (by Damian Thompson)

A black teenager thrown out of his inner-city school for being “rude, disruptive and unmanageable” has become an outstanding pupil at a leading public school.

Ryan Bell, 15, who spent last year roaming the council estates of Wandsworth, south London, after a number of local schools refused to accept him, is now taking 10 GCSEs at Downside, Somerset. He is top of his class in Latin and biology, and a star player on the rugby field. In an extra bizarre twist, he owes his life-transforming experience to a black Labour politician who has risked upsetting his party by paying for the teenager to attend the £15,000-a-year Benedictine school, and building a television documentary around it.

Trevor Phillips, a former Labour candidate for London mayor who sends his own daughter to Westminster School, arranged for two disadvantaged children to attend private schools for a Channel 4 series, Second Chance, to be broadcast later this year.

Sending Ryan to Downside succeeded beyond any expectations. But the other project, in which a girl in care attended a London day school, went less well: although she did reasonably well academically, the girl chose to continue her studies at the children’s home.

Mr Phillips said yesterday that the key to Ryan’s success was the all-embracing boarding environment, and he called on the Government to consider setting up state boarding schools for disadvantaged children.

“New Labour should concentrate less on ‘dissing’ public schools and ask how they can give excluded children an experience that is currently available only to the wealthy,” he said.

Ryan was asked to leave his old school, ADT College in Putney, following a string of disciplinary incidents that led to his mother being called in by staff two or three times a week. He would stay in bed until the afternoon and he mixed with petty criminals. His mother agreed to send him to Downside after being approached by Mr Phillips’s production company, Pepper Productions. At first, the culture shock of learning Latin from black-robed monks was immense, but Ryan quickly adjusted. “A few months ago I would have been spray-painting graffiti, but now I feel you have to give up those things,” he says in the documentary.

Ryan said yesterday that he felt welcome at the school from the moment he walked through the gates. “I started to feel at home by the end of the first week. There’s a real friendship between teachers and students that I’d never come across before. I definitely want to stay here after my GCSEs.”

Ryan received strong moral support from his headmaster, Dom Antony Sutch, who announced last week that he was stepping down after a ferocious attack on the “geek culture” poisoning British education.

“I knew Ryan was going to be a success from the moment I saw him throwing a rugby ball,” he said. “He showed such energy. What we need to consider now is how other kids can have this opportunity. In the long run, spending £15,000 on sending the right children to this sort of school would save the Government millions”.

Mr Phillips said Ryan’s story suggested that the authorities were giving up on disadvantaged children too early. “It’s a particular problem for black boys in the inner cities. When I was 13 I ran into trouble myself, and if my parents hadn’t sent me away to school in the Caribbean I know that I’d never have gone to university,” he said. “Maybe I would have got a trade, but some of my friends went down the wrong path and I might have followed them.”

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