Anna Powell reflects on the benefits of learning together at Inwoods Small School.

Cooperation is the fun of being and doing together, not necessarily doing something in particular…what matters is to awaken in ourselves this spirit of cooperation, this feeling of joy in being and doing together, without any thought of reward or punishment. (Krishnamurti, Think on These Things)

Four years ago I was walking along a quiet woodland road when I heard the clear voices of children coming from a small clearing among the trees. I could see a mixed group of boys and girls of various ages, hopping about in their gumboots and discussing something together in such a lively, articulate and cooperative way that I wondered: ‘Who are they? What are they doing there? ‘

It was my first glimpse of Inwoods Small School. Several coincidences later, I found myself teaching here. I had hopped through a creative early education myself, at a small Froebel school that my mother ran in Africa. After this, I attended one of the last of the ‘dame schools’, in Kipling’s old-English village of Burwash, where in pre-Ofsted, pre-QTS, PGCE, CPD and Enhanced Disclosure days, a cluster of children were taught the three Rs by the devoted Mrs Newton, and skipped companionably through the Sussex fields with her on nature rambles. Later, I home-schooled my own four children as they were growing up. At Inwoods Small School I recognized the atmosphere of mutual affection, kind encouragement and enthusiasm for learning together that grows more naturally in the almost homelike environment of a small community of adults and children.

In the past, small schools were commonplace, but smallness, appreciation of childhood and enthusiasm for learning were never seen as priorities for their own sake at traditional village schools. To value such qualities seriously enough to base a school curriculum on them is not to hark back nostalgically to imagined good old days, but an intelligent response to the challenge of raising our children to be competent, fulfilled human beings in an increasingly urban, technological, fast-changing and ever conflicted world.

Inwoods Small School is affiliated to Brockwood Park International School, which was founded by the educator and philosopher J Krishnamurti. Brockwood Park is for older students aged from 14 to 19, and the emphasis is on learning to be both self-aware and aware of others, on thinking for oneself, on living together cooperatively.  Inwoods was the initiative of some of the Brockwood staff. They wanted a nursery school where their own young children too could grow in a nurturing, natural environment and be encouraged to learn at their own pace. Twelve years on, Inwoods has grown into a thriving little independent primary school, the daytime home of a full-time staff of four teachers, several auxiliary staff and up to thirty enthusiastic children aged between 5 and 11. They come from local areas, sometimes considerable distances, on a weekly or part-weekly basis. Like a big family, they share the chores and the meals, and play and work together regardless of age. Parents are closely involved and their support in the form of time, energy and special skills help to keep the school lively and friendly.

The children’s day begins with a 15-minute walk, rain or shine, from the car park at Brockwood Park School along a woodland road to the two wooden barns that are Inwoods Small School. They rush into the Big Barn with a great deal of chatter and bustle, and everyone gathers on the carpet to sing out their names for the register. The whole school come together like this every morning and again during break times, when there is another stampede outside to the climbing logs, the tree house, and the grassy spaces all around. There are also frequent whole school events when everyone sets off for a day’s walk in the countryside, or joins in some special project. Perhaps this is why the children play so freely together regardless of age. There are comparatively so few of them, and they get to know each other so well.

Or is it something to do with the absence of any competitive element? The children’s individual efforts are encouraged and acknowledged, but in the work they do, there is no grading or testing. They are neither rewarded nor punished. In their sports, there are no winners and losers. The challenges are more about achieving their personal best and working effectively as a team. One new parent at the school was surprised by the lack of interest the children show in one-upmanship of clothing or possessions. It would be difficult to be fashion conscious, perhaps, when you are spending so much time running about in your rough-and-tumble gear. But there is none of the barbed backchat, allusions to television shows and celebrity gossip that can dominate playground talk these days even in primary schools. Perhaps concrete playgrounds enclosed by high fences invite boredom, and the culture of repeated testing, grades and comparisons creates heightened anxieties about status and self-worth. The Inwoods children have televisions and computers at home, but neither is used in the school curriculum. At school, playing means actively playing together. They stretch every part of the body running and jumping among trees, banks and hedges and other natural or ingeniously devised obstacles.

It is an essential principle of the school to emphasize the value of play, and of doing things together; of appreciating and caring for each other, sorting out disagreements and grievances by talking them over together, and treating every child as if they were indeed all part of one large family. The children may scatter into separate little groups to play one day – some little girls busily making a home of the Wendy house, a bunch of boys climbing trees – but the groupings and activities continually shake into other combinations, like the colours in a kaleidoscope. The next day, they might all spontaneously join together up the tree or round the Wendy house, or race round the field in a riotous new game. I am still surprised to see how unselfconsciously the eleven-year-old boys and girls will play with the smallest, giving them piggybacks and turns on the rope swing. The children who have come to Inwoods from a state school sometimes take a while to mix so freely, but the old hands heatedly complain about or casually accept each other with equal readiness.

The emphasis is on personalised and hands-on learning, with a lot of talking about every subject as it is explored (it can be hard to get these children to stop talking). They spend far more lesson time outdoors than is usual in most schools. As well as lessons in woodcraft, nature study and organic gardening, they may pursue art projects outside, such as decorating the earth oven or making sand paintings. At the beginning of the autumn term the whole school sets off on foot uphill to pick apples in the Brockwood School orchard, excitedly trundling them back in a handcart to squeeze apple juice in a wooden press and make tea with apple pies for the parents at the end of the afternoon. We have periodic grounds-clearing work parties, when they haul wheelbarrows and brandish rakes, and make a bonfire. Then there may be hot chocolate for everyone round the fire, sometimes with cookies made in a cookery class.

So many of these simple activities and shared experiences have been edged out of our lives by the pace of modern living, with its demands for always more, faster, easier. To maintain a different approach to living takes hard work, and a consistent belief in the value of doing things for oneself and with others: walking instead of driving, making for oneself instead of buying, recycling instead of wasting, creating your own entertainment, learning in a spirit of discovery rather than one of compulsion and competition. When these are built into the structure of a school day as part of a daily curriculum, the whole school community benefits. It takes planning and patience to bring about what is after all only a more natural way of being and learning. For mud and muddle are natural too, and doing things yourself and managing on a shoestring means there is always more to be done than there seems time to do.

The children and staff call each other by their first names, which helps create a friendly camaraderie throughout the school and invites chirpy participation. The class groups are so small – usually six to eight children to a class – that the teaching style is more conversational and interactive than didactic, so that as one child put it, ‘We learn things without noticing we’re learning them.’ So much time is willingly given to listening, explaining, discussing, following up bright ideas and new developments, that our lesson plans are elastic, the daily timetable slotted in somehow between the many celebrations of seasonal and other events as they arise – tobogganing in the snow, camping in the summer in the school grounds, work parties when the parents pitch in to help with general or special projects, theatrical performances… Like many home-schooling parents, some parents tend to worry at times how their child will ever fit into the harsher world after Inwoods. Yet they do, and often gratify their future teachers with their more-than-average articulate enthusiasm.

The aim of the Small School is to create an environment in which learning may unfold, as free as possible from anxiety or pressure. Staff and children learn from and with each other. It is a basic principle at Inwoods that as parents and teachers we are educators in everything we do, for good or for bad; that there is potential for learning, not only in the classroom and in schooling in its narrowest sense, but in every activity, in every relationship, in every aspect of life. Mary-Ann Ridgway, a former student of Brockwood Park, has worked at Inwoods for twelve years, as head teacher for the past six. She is passionate about giving children the freedom to discover for themselves in a safe, but not overprotective, natural environment. What if it is raining or snowing? She has the children dress up warmly in their waterproofs and go out and enjoy it. On very hot days she asks that children bring in a change of clothes so that she can turn the hose-pipe on them, to screams of delight. It is to her gentle credit that the children feel so much at home here. In photos and amateur footage the children look frankly happy. I am astonished when children who have moved on to secondary school turn up on their Inset days, joining in the familiar old assembly, lesson and circle time routines, checking out their old play-haunts. Would you choose to spend a day off school at your old primary school? If nothing else, we are giving children the time and space to be children. We may also be raising a generation of emotionally intelligent young people who will in their turn teach these values to their own children.

Before venturing into full time school teaching, Anna Powell was a transpersonal hypnotherapist for more than twenty years, teaching adult education courses and workshops in creative writing and in personal development. She is the author of the children’s book Don’t Say That Willy Nilly.