Free Schools
Janice Fletcher Jeal has written a powerful plea for Quaker values in schools (2 July). In fact, it is, today, a plea for the sort of values that all schools might be proud to reflect.

This is only the latest example of how Quaker thinking has, over time, come to be accepted as good practice whether in education or in business or in other spheres of human activity. For contemporary evidence of that, we need only look at the current £5 note.
I hope that Janice will find the opportunity to visit one or more of the Quaker schools that already exist (in fact, she almost certainly knows Ackworth already), for she would find there communities working hard to reflect the ideals of which she writes. We can claim at Leighton Park and, I know, at the other Quaker schools of England and Ireland to have achieved many of the ideals that she lists, but not (yet) all: however, work is seriously in progress.

It is heartening to read such a positive account of what a Quaker Free School would, in Janice’s view, look like, and to find it so recognisably in existence in many ways already. We know what strong views the issue of fee-charging generates among Friends, but we also know of the huge financial support the schools themselves give to needy parents and what invaluable outreach Quaker schools already provide to enable young people to create the world that Janice and we constantly dream of.
John Dunston, head
Leighton Park School

• Username
• Password
• Log in
  

• Forgot your password?

If you don't have an account you can register here