Democratic / Sudbury

No curriculum, no classes unless asked for, and children vote on the rules.

The most thoroughgoing position available. There is no curriculum and no timetable; children do what they choose all day, and lessons happen when a child asks for one. The school is run by a meeting in which every child and every staff member has one equal vote, including on rules and on staffing. The claim is that motivation cannot be manufactured and that a child left to find their own will find it.

L1: Who directs the day
L2: When formal academics start
L3: Measuring it
L4: Where the curriculum comes from
L5: What a teacher is
E1: Mixed ages
E2: Outdoors and the body
E3: Technology at school
V1: A view of the world
V2: Who else is there
V3: What it is for
C1: What the family can put in
C2: Money and distance

What it asks of you

Not what it promises

Every approach here works for the families it suits; the useful question is what it costs to run.

Genuine nerve, sustained over years, with no reassuring milestones
Accepting your child may not read until nine, and being able to live with that
Explaining the choice to family, and eventually to admissions systems
Fees, since almost none of these are state-funded

How it gets misread

Described as children doing nothing. The honest version is that children do nothing for a while — the schools say so themselves — and the disagreement is about what happens after.

Axis by axis

Where it stands

Every position with the source it was read from, and the pale band is how much internal variation the approach genuinely tolerates. A wide band is not vagueness — it means the texts in this family really do disagree with each other about that axis.

L1Who directs the day

the child chooses what to dotimetabled, and directed by adults

The lowest position on who directs the day that exists as an actual school model.