Free Schooling

What is Free Schooling?

Free Schooling is a learner-centred approach to education where students shape their own learning paths. Instead of following a fixed curriculum or relying on grades and tests, students explore what matters to them—at their own pace—with the support of a community that values equity, freedom, and shared decision-making.

This type of learning and pedagogy have been around for a very long time. In North America, Free Schooling became popular in the 1960s largely due to A.S. Neill's Summerhill School (which itself was founded back in 1921!). Unschooling, a term coined by John Holt in the 70s, is equally influential on our foundational principles, as are other non-coercive and self-directed education paradigms found in indigenous and non-Western pedagogies.

Alpha II's philosophy of unschooling is a living entity that grows with every person who enters the space and adapts to the ever-changing body of educational research that surrounds it. In 2014, researcher Peter Gray completed this study identifying the benefits of the unschooling approach to education. Other important thinkers who have supported this style of learning in their writing and practice include Ivan Illich, Paulo Freire and John Taylor Gatto.