International links

As well as our link to China we continue to maintain a range of international contacts. Ian Cunningham met with Australian colleagues in Sydney in February and they reported on the enthusiasm for SML in their primary school.

We continue to support the International Democratic Education Conference (IDEC) as well as the Alternative Education Resource Organisation (AERO) in New York.

Visitors to the College

We continue to welcome visitors who are interested in our work. We take seriously our charitable status to develop educational practice and to support parents and others. We have visits from other community organisations as well as schools (where they are looking for alternatives to use with students who do not respond to classroom-based learning).

We have particularly enjoyed visits from educationalists from other countries who are planning to develop Self Managed Learning programmes. The most recent of these visitors have been from Chile and from the USA.

Another reason for visitors is for them to engage with students around issues of interest to them – and where an outsider can bring in expertise. A recent example was a session run by Helen Long from Liberation Foods – a Fairtrade cooperative. This allowed students to ask her questions about the work of their nut cooperative and about Fairtrade in general.