Your Child’s Welfare & Safety

Yes. TNSS is an environment where individuals are treated fairly and respectfully within a safe space. The students and staff will make the school’s rules together, and any individual can report staff or students for violations of the rules. If someone is ‘written up’ they must attend the Judicial Committee where the conflict is investigated and reviewed by their peers and a staff member to decide on appropriate action.

Our law book will contain all the rules of the community, as well as procedures for handling rule infractions. The rules will be decided democratically by students and staff. In general, the rules will provide for the protection of individual rights while maintaining an atmosphere of safety and respect. Anyone in our community will be able to “write-up” anyone else in the community. A student-led judicial committee will gather to investigate all complaints and determine sentences as needed. Sudbury experience is that students find the system to be the fairest way of handling discipline.

Bullying can occur in any context and TNSS like other schools takes bullying very seriously. However what makes Sudbury Schools different is how they deal with it. As discipline and safety are managed by the community as a whole, not just the adults in charge, there is no shame attached to bringing up or “writing -up” an incident. Being brought up is not a judgement on the person, merely the community saying ‘we don’t approve of your actions’. Because the whole community shares the responsibility, acts of harassment are strongly disapproved of and dealt with quickly.   This has been shown to be very empowering for the “bullied” student, who learns to take care of him or herself against any bully in the future by speaking up for themselves and is less likely to see themselves as a victim, and it is often a transformative experience for the “bully” who gets firm but respectful treatment from his or her peers..

Mainstream education segregate children by age for convenience, and this creates an environment where it is not ‘cool’ for older students to associate with younger ones.

However, in Sudbury school age mixing is natural for children, and students form friendships within all age groups. Younger children often look up to older students and see them as role models whom they can learn from, and older students learn care-taking roles and build in confidence as leaders. In fact in the Sudbury model of education the mixed age group is known as a ‘secret weapon’ i.e. the key ingredient making it so successful.  

For more on mixed age groups in education read – Click Here