22-24 April
EDUCATION:
PAST > Present > Future
22-24 April
EDUCATION:
PAST > Present > Future
Free online event | 3 days | 8 speakers | Recordings available
Free online event
3 days | 8 speakers
Recordings available
More and more people seem to be questioning modern mainstream education.
This event - which celebrates the launch of a new online course on alternatives to conventional schooling - takes you on a journey through education’s past, present and possible future, exploring why this shift is happening and how education could be reimagined.
More and more people seem to be questioning modern mainstream education.
This event - which celebrates the launch of a new online course on alternatives to conventional schooling - takes you on a journey through education’s past, present and possible future, exploring why this shift is happening and how education could be reimagined.
More and more people seem to be questioning modern mainstream education.
This event - which celebrates the launch of a new online course on alternatives to conventional schooling - takes you on a journey through education’s past, present and possible future, exploring why this shift is happening and how education could be reimagined.
More and more people seem to be questioning modern mainstream education.
This event - which celebrates the launch of a new online course on alternatives to conventional schooling - takes you on a journey through education’s past, present and possible future, exploring why this shift is happening and how education could be reimagined.
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Past
We’ll look back through human history. How did our modern school system come about and what was education like before?
Present
We’ll explore what’s happening now. Why are an increasing number of families opting out of the system? What are the longer-term implications of modern schooling for individuals and wider society?
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And what does education look like in parts of the world that have not adopted the conventional model?
Future
Our modern school system is a man-made invention, and therefore it’s something we can change. Thinking outside of the box, let’s explore what education could look like in the future...
-
Past
We’ll look back through human history. How did our modern school system come about and what was education like before?
Present
We’ll explore what’s happening now. Why are an increasing number of families opting out of the system? What are the longer-term implications of modern schooling, for individuals and wider society?
And what does education look like in parts of the world that have not adopted the conventional model?
Future
Our modern school system is a man-made invention, and therefore it’s something we can change. Thinking outside of the box, let’s explore what education could look like in the future...
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Dr Margaret Mead, Cultural Anthropologist
Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
Dr Margaret Mead, Cultural Anthropologist
Speakers and Schedule
Wednesday 22 April
11am BST: Kelly Rigg
8pm BST: Lucy Aitkenreed
Thursday 23 April
11am BST: Dr Chris Bagley
5.30pm BST: Fabienne Vailes, with panellists Sifaan Zavahir, May Ling Thomas and Je'anna Clements
Friday 24 April
TBC BST: Lea Jovy
Speakers and Schedule
Wednesday 22 April
11am BST: Kelly Rigg
8pm BST: Lucy Aitkenreed
Thursday 23 April
11am BST: Dr Chris Bagley
5.30pm BST: Fabienne Vailes, with panellists Sifaan Zavahir, May Ling Thomas and Je'anna Clements.
Friday 24 April
TBC BST: Lea Jovy
DAY 1: Wednesday 22 April
DAY 1
Wednesday 22 April
11am BST
Kelly Rigg
School was designed (not discovered): A critical history of mass schooling
In this talk, Kelly will explore the modern history of mass schooling in the UK, with a curious, critical lens. She will ask how the system was designed, what it was built to achieve and what is has quietly trained us to accept as ‘normal’.
She will help trace the shift from home, church and community learning – to industrial-age standardisation, how measurement, compliance and the ‘school standard’ became so deeply embedded, and the consequences we now face.
Kelly invites us to hold nuance, recognising what schools can offer – while still questioning the commonly held beliefs we have inherited around education, imagining what education could look like if we centred agency, broader opportunity, wellbeing and life-long learning.
About Kelly
Kelly Rigg is a UK-based home educating mum of two and a neurodiversity life coach who supports families detouring from mainstream schooling - whether through neurodiversity, unmet needs, or a desire to do life differently.
With nearly six years of lived home education experience and two years coaching, Kelly helps parents embrace a more neuro-affirming approach to education, reclaiming confidence, and creating lives built around learning that work for their actual children (not an imaginary “school standard”).
She co-hosts The BIG Home Ed Conversations podcast - 5-star rated and consistently ranked in the UK’s top home education podcasts - growing downloads by 400% in 2025.
Kelly has recently completed the Barrett Coaching & Training’s ‘ADHD Coach Training’, dual-accredited by the Association for Coaching and the Universal Coaching Alliance.
11am BST
Kelly Rigg
School was designed (not discovered): A critical history of mass schooling
In this talk, Kelly will explore the modern history of mass schooling in the UK, with a curious, critical lens. She will ask how the system was designed, what it was built to achieve and what is has quietly trained us to accept as ‘normal’.
She will help trace the shift from home, church and community learning – to industrial-age standardisation, how measurement, compliance and the ‘school standard’ became so deeply embedded, and the consequences we now face.
Kelly invites us to hold nuance, recognising what schools can offer – while still questioning the commonly held beliefs we have inherited around education, imagining what education could look like if we centred agency, broader opportunity, wellbeing and life-long learning.
About Kelly
Kelly Rigg is a UK-based home educating mum of two and a neurodiversity life coach who supports families detouring from mainstream schooling - whether through neurodiversity, unmet needs, or a desire to do life differently.
With nearly six years of lived home education experience and two years coaching, Kelly helps parents embrace a more neuro-affirming approach to education, reclaiming confidence, and creating lives built around learning that work for their actual children (not an imaginary “school standard”).
She co-hosts The BIG Home Ed Conversations podcast - 5-star rated and consistently ranked in the UK’s top home education podcasts - growing downloads by 400% in 2025.
Kelly has recently completed the Barrett Coaching & Training’s ‘ADHD Coach Training’, dual-accredited by the Association for Coaching and the Universal Coaching Alliance.
8-9.30pm BST
Lucy Aitkenreed
School Wounds - the hidden harm of institutionalised education
In this session, Lucy outlines the wounds we pick up from school and how no one makes it through unscathed. She shows how these show up in our daily lives but provides ideas to ease school’s long term impact on our relationships, goals and lives.
About Lucy
Lucy Aitkenread lives an unschooling life with 15 year old Ramona and 13 year old Juno. She’s spent the last decade creating an off grid life and a solar-powered livelihood. She teaches on deschooling and matriarchal business.
8-9.30pm BST
Lucy Aitkenreed
School Wounds - the hidden harm of institutionalised education
In this session, Lucy outlines the wounds we pick up from school and how no one makes it through unscathed. She shows how these show up in our daily lives but provides ideas to ease school’s long term impact on our relationships, goals and lives.
About Lucy
Lucy Aitkenread lives an unschooling life with 15 year old Ramona and 13 year old Juno. She’s spent the last decade creating an off grid life and a solar-powered livelihood. She teaches on deschooling and matriarchal business.
We cannot solve the problems of our time with the same thinking that created them.
Dr Albert Einstein
We cannot solve the problems of our time with the same thinking that created them.
Dr Albert Einstein
DAY 2: Thursday 23 April
DAY 2
Thursday 23 April
11am BST
Dr Chris Bagley
Perspectives on education and childhood across time and space - a story of wild variation and diverse possibilities.
Education has been a crucial aspect of the human experience since the first homo sapiens roamed the earth. In the modern west, schooling has become the primary lens through education is viewed and as a consequence, other ways of conceiving childhood are obscured.
For 99.9% of homo sapien existence, schooling did not exist. Does this mean that children were not educated? What was happening during this time? What is happening today in societies where schooling is not a thing? The aim of this talk is to explore these questions and shed some light on the fascinating ways that education is applied across time and space.
About Chris
Chris started his career as a secondary school teacher and later trained as an Educational Psychologist.
For the last ten years he has worked as a practitioner psychologist, mostly in the Youth Justice sector, Pupil Referral Unit and child prison contexts. Chris is a lecturer, tutor and doctorate research supervisor on the Child and Adolescent Educational Psychology course at the Institute of Education, UCL.
At States of Mind, he is Director of Research and collaborates with UCL and others to conduct participatory action research that generates young peoples’ insights and empowers them to facilitate societal change. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Square Peg.
Chris has written numerous journal articles, alongside book chapters and opinion pieces in media such as The Independent, The Guardian, Byline Times, Schoolsweek and The Psychologist. He has also appeared on numerous podcasts and videos with a focus on education transformation and is a musician and recording artist.
11am BST
Dr Chris Bagley
Perspectives on education and childhood across time and space - a story of wild variation and diverse possibilities.
Education has been a crucial aspect of the human experience since the first homo sapiens roamed the earth. In the modern west, schooling has become the primary lens through education is viewed and as a consequence, other ways of conceiving childhood are obscured.
For 99.9% of homo sapien existence, schooling did not exist. Does this mean that children were not educated? What was happening during this time? What is happening today in societies where schooling is not a thing? The aim of this talk is to explore these questions and shed some light on the fascinating ways that education is applied across time and space.
About Chris
Chris started his career as a secondary school teacher and later trained as an Educational Psychologist.
For the last ten years he has worked as a practitioner psychologist, mostly in the Youth Justice sector, Pupil Referral Unit and child prison contexts. Chris is a lecturer, tutor and doctorate research supervisor on the Child and Adolescent Educational Psychology course at the Institute of Education, UCL.
At States of Mind, he is Director of Research and collaborates with UCL and others to conduct participatory action research that generates young peoples’ insights and empowers them to facilitate societal change. He is also a Non-Executive Director of Square Peg.
Chris has written numerous journal articles, alongside book chapters and opinion pieces in media such as The Independent, The Guardian, Byline Times, Schoolsweek and The Psychologist. He has also appeared on numerous podcasts and videos with a focus on education transformation and is a musician and recording artist.
5.30-7.30pm BST
Fabienne Vailes
Panel Discussion: Reimagining the Future of Education
Fabienne will be hosting a panel discussion to explore what the future of education could look like, if we really look beyond our mainstream school system and imagine something new.
About Fabienne
Fabienne Vailes is the author of 'The Flourishing Student' (in its second edition), aimed at teachers and tutors, and co-author of 'How to Grow a Grown Up', written for parents with Dr Dominique Thompson, with another new book on the way.
She is also a podcaster and Founder of Flourishing Education.
As part of her PhD at the University of Bristol she is currently exploring How we Co-Create Enabling Environments in Secondary Schools to BE and Flourish Together.
5.30-7.30pm BST
Fabienne Vailes
Panel Discussion: Reimagining the Future of Education
Fabienne will be hosting a panel discussion to explore what the future of education could look like, if we really look beyond our mainstream school system and imagine something new.
About Fabienne
Fabienne Vailes is the author of 'The Flourishing Student' (in its second edition), aimed at teachers and tutors, and co-author of 'How to Grow a Grown Up', written for parents with Dr Dominique Thompson. She is soon to be co-author of "What the F*** is going on in Education in England - A Manifesto to Reclaim our Hearts and Souls", co-authored with Dr Natalie Rothwell-Warn.
She is also a podcaster and Founder of Flourishing Education.
As part of her PhD at the University of Bristol she is currently exploring How we Co-Create Enabling Environments in Secondary Schools to BE and Flourish Together.
'Future of Education' Panellists
'Future of Education' Panellists
Sifaan Savahir
Democratic school founder and co-founder of Rights-Centric Education.
More About Sifaan
Sifaan Zavahir managed to keep-alive into adulthood a common childhood skill that is often suppressed: insatiably asking discomfiting questions.
That process took him through programming, engineering, leadership development for corporates to, eventually, education, where he identifies as a Dehegemonizer: in Sri Lanka at Kinder Republic, a Democratic School he co-founded in 2021, and internationally via Rights-Centric Education.
He is also working on a new "operating system" for education where communities are learning "with" each other (instead of "from" experts) based on abundance, consent and trust.
May Ling Thomas
Coach, energy healer and operations volunteer at Freedom to Learn.
More About May Ling
May Ling Thomas is a British South-East Asian Chinese mother, wife of Steve, home educator of two daughters, a transformative coach, energy healer and, amongst all the other things, she’s an organising member of the Freedom to Learn Network.
As part of her recovery from internalised neo-liberal capitalism and white supremacy, and because she was “good at school”, May Ling now remains committed to not being easy to measure, define or pigeon-hole. Her latest achievements include Lvl 431 in “Drop the Cat”, writing a job application without selling herself out and a 17 day streak of remembering to put the dishwasher on before bed.
Je'anna Clements
Horizontal Communication and Self-Directed Education facilitation trainer, PDA consultant and co-founder of Rights-Centric Education.
More About Je'anna
Je'anna Clements is a mother, writer and passionate advocate for children's rights.
She co-founded and facilitated at Riverstone Village, a Self-Directed Education (SDE) community in South Africa.
With an Honours degree in Psychology, Je'anna went on to pursue self-education in SDE, becoming a specialist in the field.
She offers international training and support for SDE facilitators and unschooling parents, focusing on empowering young people, including those with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA).
She is the author of several books, including "What if School Creates DYSlexia?", "Help, My Kid Hates School!" and the "Helping the Butterfly Hatch" series for SDE facilitators.
Je'anna served as an Oversight Committee member at EUDEC (European Democratic Education Community), and co-founded Fhree.org and MyLifeMy.Education before becoming a Founding Member of Rights-Centric Education.
Sifaan Savahir
Democratic school founder and co-founder of Rights-Centric Education.
More About Sifaan
Sifaan Zavahir managed to keep-alive into adulthood a common childhood skill that is often suppressed: insatiably asking discomfiting questions.
That process took him through programming, engineering, leadership development for corporates to, eventually, education, where he identifies as a Dehegemonizer: in Sri Lanka at Kinder Republic, a Democratic School he co-founded in 2021, and internationally via Rights-Centric Education.
He is also working on a new "operating system" for education where communities are learning "with" each other (instead of "from" experts) based on abundance, consent and trust.
May Ling Thomas
Coach, energy healer and operations volunteer at Freedom to Learn.
More About May Ling
May Ling Thomas is a British South-East Asian Chinese mother, wife of Steve, home educator of two daughters, a transformative coach, energy healer and, amongst all the other things, she’s an organising member of the Freedom to Learn Network.
As part of her recovery from internalised neo-liberal capitalism and white supremacy, and because she was “good at school”, May Ling now remains committed to not being easy to measure, define or pigeon-hole. Her latest achievements include Lvl 431 in “Drop the Cat”, writing a job application without selling herself out and a 17 day streak of remembering to put the dishwasher on before bed.
Je'anna Clements
Je'anna Clements
Horizontal Communication and Self-Directed Education facilitation trainer, PDA consultant and co-founder of Rights-Centric Education.
More About Je'anna
Je'anna Clements is a mother, writer and passionate advocate for children's rights.
She co-founded and facilitated at Riverstone Village, a Self-Directed Education (SDE) community in South Africa.
With an Honours degree in Psychology, Je'anna went on to pursue self-education in SDE, becoming a specialist in the field.
She offers international training and support for SDE facilitators and unschooling parents, focusing on empowering young people, including those with Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA).
She is the author of several books, including "What if School Creates DYSlexia?", "Help, My Kid Hates School!" and the "Helping the Butterfly Hatch" series for SDE facilitators.
Je'anna served as an Oversight Committee member at EUDEC (European Democratic Education Community), and co-founded Fhree.org and MyLifeMy.Education before becoming a Founding Member of Rights-Centric Education.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey, Philosopher and Psychologist
DAY 3: Friday 24 April
TBC BST
Lea Jovy
Building Better Pathways into the World of Work (and Adulthood) for Young People
In this session, Lea shares what the POP Hove pilot revealed about what young people actually need for the future, to navigate the world of work - and adulthood - on their own terms.
About Lea
Lea Jovy is the founder of Mission Equality CIC and co-founder of POP Hove - a 12-week pilot learning hub for teens built on self-direction, real-world competencies, and a fundamental rejection of the idea that young people need to be moulded to fit a system rather than equipped to change it.
A home educating parent of a (nearly) 13 and 17-year-old, Lea's decision to educate outside the system wasn't a lifestyle choice - it was a values one. That same conviction drives Mission Equality CIC's broader mission: to build a global network of learning hubs and connect them to mission-aligned organisations genuinely experimenting with doing business differently - creating an ecosystem where how we learn and how we work are more fully aligned.
Every great advance in science has issued from a new audacity of imagination.
John Dewey, Philosopher and Psychologist
DAY 3
Friday 24 April
TBC BST
Lea Jovy
Building Better Pathways into the World of Work (and Adulthood) for Young People
In this session, Lea shares what the POP Hove pilot revealed about what young people actually need for the future, to navigate the world of work - and adulthood - on their own terms.
About Lea
Lea Jovy is the founder of Mission Equality CIC and co-founder of POP Hove - a 12-week pilot learning hub for teens built on self-direction, real-world competencies, and a fundamental rejection of the idea that young people need to be moulded to fit a system rather than equipped to change it.
A home educating parent of a (nearly) 13 and 17-year-old, Lea's decision to educate outside the system wasn't a lifestyle choice - it was a values one.
That same conviction drives Mission Equality CIC's broader mission: to build a global network of learning hubs and connect them to mission-aligned organisations genuinely experimenting with doing business differently - creating an ecosystem where how we learn and how we work are more fully aligned.
Announcing a New Course!
Announcing a New Course!
Find an Alternative to Conventional Schooling
During this event, you will have the opportunity to find out about a new online course which showcases a variety of ways to approach education in the 21st century.
It includes 10 modules - presentations and interviews with leading education innovators - which you can work through at your own pace, to help you find an approach which aligns with your values and hopes for the future.
Find an Alternative to Conventional Schooling
During this event, you will have the opportunity to find out about a new online course which showcases a variety of ways to approach education in the 21st century.
It includes 10 modules - presentations and interviews with leading education innovators - which you can work through at your own pace, to help you find an approach which aligns with your values and hopes for the future.
Event Organiser
My name’s Jo Symes. Ten years ago, I sent my children to their local school without a second thought. I’d never questioned the education system before. But very quickly, it became clear that they were not thriving and I began to explore alternatives to conventional schooling.
In 2019 I set up the Progressive Education Group on Facebook which now has over 11k members, including parents/carers, educators, academics, researchers, psychologists, education innovators and changemakers.
The growth of the group inspired me to create the website and organisation, Progressive Education, so that resources could be shared more widely.
Progressive Education raises awareness of alternatives to conventional schooling and campaigns for change within mainstream education.
I hope you enjoy this event and that people find my new course useful.
Event Organiser
My name’s Jo Symes. Ten years ago, I sent my children to their local school without a second thought. I’d never questioned the education system before. But very quickly, it became clear that they were not thriving and I began to explore alternatives to conventional schooling.
In 2019 I set up the Progressive Education Group on Facebook which now has over 11k members, including parents/carers, educators, academics, researchers, psychologists, education innovators and changemakers.
The growth of the group inspired me to create the website and organisation, Progressive Education, so that resources could be shared more widely.
Progressive Education raises awareness of alternatives to conventional schooling and campaigns for change within mainstream education.
I hope you enjoy this event and that people find my new course useful.
Copyright Progressive Education 2026
Copyright Progressive Education 2026