On the first day of The Acorn School - 16th September 1991, in that cramped nine-by-five-foot conservatory - I welcomed four children. Financially, none of the parents could pay the fees, except for one parent, who worked as an osteopath. Nevertheless, I was committed to teaching these children with enthusiasm and never requested fees from the others. That wasn't naivety or poor business planning. It was a principle. As someone who grew up in poverty - the youngest of nine ch

In 2006, the BBC featured The Acorn School in an article titled "The school that becomes a family." The piece noted that I had "old-fashioned values" and described our approach: "no TV or computers for juniors, but plenty of camping trips for all." "Old-fashioned values" was meant as criticism. I wore it as a badge of honour. Twenty years later, at 82, having spent over 50 years in education and witnessed the profound transformation of childhood through four decades at The Ac

When inspectors arrived in 2023 and awarded The Acorn School "Outstanding" in all five categories, I felt vindicated. Not because I needed external validation after thirty years of work, but because it proved something I'd always believed: alternative education could excel even under conventional scrutiny. The journey to that Outstanding rating wasn't straightforward. We'd been Outstanding before, in 2012. We'd slipped to Good in 2019. And then we'd climbed back to Outstandin

One of the most frequent questions parents asked me was: "But how will they get into university without GCSEs?" The anxiety in their voices was palpable. They wanted to believe in our approach-the holistic education, the focus on the whole child, the lack of testing pressure-but this question kept them awake at night. I understood that anxiety. In a culture that equates academic achievement with examination results, choosing a school that doesn't offer conventional qualificat

In my years leading The Acorn School - from that cramped nine-by-five-foot conservatory in 1991 to achieving seven Outstanding Ofsted inspections - I watched educational trends come and go. Governments changed policies. Inspection frameworks have evolved. Technology transformed daily life. But one principle never changed for me: childhood matters, and we were destroying it in our rush to prepare children for an adult world. As someone who survived brutal playground beatings a

Looking back on my journey from a Norfolk childhood to founding a school, I can see the thread that connected it all - even when, at the time, it felt like I was stumbling from one chapter to the next. My path to education was unconventional. I didn't train as a teacher straight from school. I didn't follow the expected route. But perhaps that's precisely why The Acorn School became what it did. Norfolk Beginnings: A Skinny Boy in a Tough World I was born in 1944 and grew up

On 16th September 1991, I stood in a cramped glass conservatory - just nine feet by five feet, with several broken panes and much to be done - and welcomed four children to the first day of The Acorn School. That forty-five square foot space was our entire classroom. We had one table, five chairs, some paper we'd managed to obtain, and Stockmeyer wax blocks. I cherished it deeply as the starting point of my own school. As a young boy, I had held a vision deep in my heart - on

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I woke up to a beautiful, sunny, copper-coloured autumn morning, and as I opened my bedroom window I could feel a soft, warm breeze, the...

My passion for fishing had its true genesis from when I was given for Christmas by my dear mother, Ernest Hemingway’s book ‘The Old Man...

This short, true story began one evening while I was passing by a chip-shop in Maple Cross, Hertfordshire, with Mark Knopfler of Dire...

I was six years old in 1950 and I was standing behind my brother Bill in the family’s workshop watching him make a coarse fishing rod....

I was six years old in 1950 and I was standing behind my brother Bill in the family’s workshop watching him make a coarse fishing rod....

I was looking forward to the new coarse fishing season opening on June 16th. 1977. Throughout the winter my brother Bill, my friend...

When the first breath of Spring called the trees to waken from their wintry graves, and the beauty of nature is re-born, I woke and set...

When one has been alive for a number of decades, in my case over seven, it seems to some that ancient stories are somehow always fiction....