Welcome
to our interactive
centenary website

Celebrating 100 years of Summerhill School and the inspirations A.S.Neill has given the world. Join our wider community, share your own story and create a project or two. Also please enjoy new, never seen before insights into our school.

1921-20021 Celebrating a centenary A.S.Neill's Summerhill School

Have a look around.

Welcome from
Zoë Neill Readhead

Welcome to our new centenary website which is commemorating one hundred years of A.S.Neill’s amazing school.  Founded in Dresden, Germany in 1921 Summerhill has survived against all the odds, having been pilloried by the press, misrepresented by the media and harried by Her Majesty’s School Inspectors throughout its history. Add to that the constant battle with financing and it is amazing that it is still here, not only surviving, but thriving!

Never in his wildest dreams could Neill, Neill Orange Peel have imagined that Summerhill would reach such a ripe old age – or that it would be as influential as it has been throughout the world. 

Almost weekly I receive emails saying, not that people have read my father’s books and enjoyed them – but that they have read my father’s books and IT CHANGED THEIR LIVES!

Summerhill’s hundred years give all of us a chance to celebrate the philosophy that Neill created and also to perhaps try to spread the word and find ways of sharing what we have been doing here with more people and schools worldwide.

This website has been created to celebrate interactively with all of you.  We encourage you to get involved and to tell us just what A.S.Neill, his books and his ideas have done for you or how they have affected you in your own life or that of your school.

Please make sure that you go and check out the pages about our proposed A.S.Neill Archive and Research Centre. This is a very exciting project that will enable serious research into educating the ‘whole’ child, the importance of childhood in its natural sense, and how a ‘Neillian’ education can prepare young people better for the world they live in. So, a truly sustainable education for a newly sustainable world.

It will also provide a professional standard archive to ensure that Summerhill and everything that makes it so special will be preserved for the next hundred years!

We will need some help with the financing of this building, so anything you can think of or feel you may be able to do to help with this would be amazing.

Enjoy the site, don’t forget to raise us a glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve as the clock strikes midnight into 2021 and we hope to see many of you at some of our events.

Best wishes to all,

Zoë 

AIKATERINI KALYVA

I AM A PRIMARY TEACHER SINCE 2000 AND I AM FAMILIAR WITH MIGRANTS, REFUGEES, SPECIAL NEEDS EDUCATION. I AM INSPIRED IN HUMAN RIGTHS EDUCATION.

michael collins

I read the book and knew deep inside I had to get to know Summerhill. I was insisting and in the end Zoe accepted that I come and stay at the school for 14 days. These days changed my life in many ways. I got to know the children and the staff at the school and I felt like a part of the family. Thank you so much everyone for inviting you into your life. I am so grateful for everything I could contribute with. The treehut, the playground, the ladder to BIG BEACH. Thank you... I haven´t been back to the school for a while, but you are all with me in my heart. A deep thanks to you Zoe. I have told so many children (and adults) in Denmark about Summerhill and the all want to go. I am sure the story about Summerhill have inspired them on many different levels. I am looking forward to my next visit. I want to go see you all soon. Much love from me.

David Menendez Alvarez-Hevia

WEBSITE

Summerhill is believing in freedom, childhood and education! Hope on "alternative" and "radial" education. This school and Neill's ideas represents for me an ideal (but real) form of understanding and practicing education. A fascinating experience that shows us that connecting education with life in a meaningful form is possible and needed

Herbert Blumberg

WEBSITE

As if to confirm Summerhill's non-partisan democratic ethos, Neill's book Summerhill (1960 edition) was called to my attention by a friend who at the time had solidly conservative (small "c") values, saying "I think they have something there!" Impressed, I shared the text with various friends - some of whom followed, visited and/or learned from the school's repute. After moving from America to England in the late 1960s, had the joy of visiting and sitting in on a Meeting on an open day. Mini-anecdote: just after we entered the school's premises, I saw Oliver (who I think taught O-levels and wood-working) happening to approach, a small piece of timber in hand. "English?" he inclusively gently asked, presumably (in retrospect) referring to my language or residence. My immediate response: "You or the wood?" He politely didn't bat an eye at what must have seemed my rather bizarre response. Flashing forward to the 1980s: for her primary years our daughter went to a state school in Kilburn, London. But I think even there she benefitted from Summerhill's legacy, some of which has diffused to educational practice in general. Since 2009 we've divided out time between London (where I work, except during the pandemic when I'm 100% online instead of around 80%) and - most of the time - east Suffolk, barely 10 miles from Leiston. Not too long after semi-moving to Suffolk our daughter's then boyfriend and I had the edifying pleasure of visiting Summerhill on an open day. I of course continue to follow the school on social media, delighting that it continues to go from strength to strength.

ASSOCIAZIONE GORILLA

WEBSITE

Inspired by the experience of Summerhill and by A.S. Neill literature, we, educators, specialists and friends, founded Associazione Gorilla with the aim to offer children and teens the opportunity to experience Freedom through self-government. We are based in Rome and the revolutionary impulse of Summerhill reaches us vigorously!

Haimei Zhang

The reason why I came to Japan is because of a book called 'The Little Girl at the Window' by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi. This book tells the story of a little girl and her super wonderful school. I was attracted to this school and later discovered that the prototype of this school was Summerhill school. For various reasons, instead of going to the UK, I came to Japan to study. Because of the story of Summerhill school and Neill, my life has changed dramatically. I have gained a freer and wider world. It is still the most perfect school in my heart, and I am looking forward to the day when I can walk into it with my full story. <3