🔗 Sudbury School

🔗 Alternative education

A Sudbury school is a type of school, usually for the K-12 age range, where students have complete responsibility for their own education, and the school is run by a direct democracy in which students and staff are equal citizens. Students use their time however they wish, and learn as a by-product of ordinary experience rather than through coursework. There is no predetermined educational syllabus, prescriptive curriculum or standardized instruction. This is a form of democratic education. Daniel Greenberg, one of the founders of the original Sudbury Model school, writes that the two things that distinguish a Sudbury Model school are that everyone - adults and children - are treated equally and that there is no authority other than that granted by the consent of the governed.

While each Sudbury Model school operates independently and determines their own policies and procedures, they share a common culture. The intended culture within a Sudbury school has been described with such words as freedom, trust, respect, responsibility and democracy.

The name 'Sudbury' originates from the Sudbury Valley School, founded in 1968 in Framingham, Massachusetts, near Sudbury, Massachusetts. Though there is no formal or regulated definition of a Sudbury Model school, there are now more than 60 schools that identify themselves with Sudbury around the world. Some, though not all, include "Sudbury" in their name. These schools operate as independent entities and are not formally associated in any way.