SMALL SCHOOL HARTLAND -VENUE FOR WEIRDWEEKEND -15-17 AUGUST 2014

At the end of the Summer, we collect seeds from the flowers and vegetables and these are saved till February when a local organic gardening group uses the school for a Seed Swap. Anyone can come along to this event and even if they do not bring seeds to share, they are welcome to help themselves to some of our seeds. The event is advertised throughout North Devon and it is a good meeting place for gardeners to chat over a cup of tea and a piece of cake made by parents and students.
All of the students at The Small School have lots of opportunities to learn about cooking. Every student at the school spends a week helping out in the school kitchen. During this time we work with a different parent each day and we learn how to cook for over thirty people each meal. It is really good fun and we can use the recipes at home too. We also have to learn about budgeting as we can only spend £1 a person on the ingredients. This will help us when we live on our own we will be able to cook for ourselves. There are also other opportunities for us to help with cooking as the school organises a lot of catering events. For example the school organises a monthly Farmers’ Market in the village and students help to cook a variety of dishes from full breakfasts to just tea and cake.
As well as learning about gardening and cooking, we can also choose from 16 subjects at GCSE level. The subjects are Maths, English Language and English Literature, Biology, Physics, Chemistry, Drama, Music, Film, Photography, History, Geography, Latin, Classics, Art and Textiles.
Our school is in an old chapel building and it was set up just over thirty years ago by Satish Kumar as he was concerned about young people travelling long distances to large comprehensives. As a result of this we do not receive any government funding and parents only pay just over £500 a term. The rest of the money comes from the many fundraisers we have to organise and donations from people who support the philosophy of the school. We get quite a lot of visitors from all over the world and we often have volunteers who come into school to teach school to teach a workshop or help out for the day.
If you would like to visit our school then the contact details are on our website www.thesmallschool.org.uk
Year 8 and 9 students
The Small School, Hartland, North Devon