Special issue guest editorial: Alternative education for all?

This special issue aligns with and sometimes questions Global Sustainable Development Goal 4, Quality Education (UN, 2015), as authors reflect on practices that can “ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all”. To investigate equality, inequity and opportunity in alternatives to dominant modes of education as schooling, the issue brings together contributions that offer perspectives on what a “good” education can look like, and explores challenges of becoming, being and belonging within and across different alternative education (AE) provisions.In recent decades, wide-ranging pedagogic approaches, community learning contexts, schools, programmes and curricula have evolved to constitute heterogenous provisions collectively known as AE. The philosophies, pedagogic approaches, curricula and learning sites commonly connected to forms of AE constitute an eclectic group that is inherently heterogeneous, diffuse and highly individualised to the micro, meso and macro socio-cultural contexts within which they are practised.Fundamental controversies about what AE is alternative to, and importantly, for whom, continue to be defined and redefined through the knowledge production of its stakeholders, including researchers, practitioners, policymakers and children and young people who experience AE. At the very centre lies debate about what counts as a “good” education. For example, in the England, the Children’s wellbeing and Schools Bill has resurfaced discussion on how, what, when and where children and young people, parents/guardians, communities and the state should play a role in ensuring that the educational pathways travelled through AE ensure equity, equality of opportunity and participation into adulthood (Fensham-Smith, 2021). That contemporary discourses so often focus on children and young people highlights the extent to which education is considered synonymous with school and specific life stages.Having established that school is not the sole locus of education, that is precisely where the authors of this issue begin. Green et al. consider the extent to which enabling a youth-led approach might empower and extend young people’s voices and build their critical capacity to enact change. Their focus on youth-participatory action research in a school setting offers a perspective that is less adult-centric. From this, school-based educators might reflect on the potential for similar, less traditional and transmissive pedagogical approaches, whether these are school-based or otherwise.Learning outside traditional school settings, including outdoors, is valued and common in early years education in the UK. As Wenham discusses in her study reporting on research-into-practice inquiry that draws on the experiences of young people. Two case studies are discussed. In Australia, an annual outdoor education programme has been incorporated into the school year and showcases a vital and enriching aspect of mainstream practice. The second provision, in England, is an AE setting offering Forest School sessions for re-engaging secondary-aged children who have been temporarily excluded from their schools. Wenham presents a provocation to consider the potentially rich educational opportunities offered to all in this outdoor AE form centred on agency and belonging. Known as alternative provision (AP), outdoor and setting-based school alternatives have become increasingly common across the UK over recent years (see, e.g. Power et al., 2024).In the third article in this collection, Smith explores the rise in demand for AP in England and the extent to which young learners’ individual needs, including disability, health and wellbeing, can be met through remote online learning. Despite notable contrasts with Wenham’s Forest School setting in terms of the practices discussed, adolescents waiting to access this form of online AP have often become marginalised, and many have been excluded, or are at risk of exclusion, from their mainstream school. Smith’s empirical research with school-based practitioners is contextualised through a detailed analysis of secondary data from the Department for Education (2024).The fourth contribution takes readers beyond school-aged children and into higher education. Graham et al. report on their research with UK university students whose route to undergraduate study did not follow the typical school-based path. Their research with previously home-educated learners explores student identity, perceived barriers and facilitators in the application process and beyond, and implications for future policy and practice. Given universities’ mandate to widen participation (Boliver et al., 2019), clear tensions are evident in the absence of a standard mechanism to acknowledge these students’ prior educational experience via the UK’s Universities and Colleges Admissions Service application.Finally, Dobrich reflects on the potential for alternative educational experiences to address persisting inequalities for adult learners. In considering how embodied learning can enhance equality of opportunity and equity in learning and community building within refugee and migrant education in Canada, Dobrich seeks to expand the notion of what constitutes quality education. Dobrich adopts a decolonising approach, centring participants’ origins and Indigenous perspectives. In this way, it is argued that embodied learning places the learner at the centre and presents opportunities for consensual engagement that open new possibilities for quality and inclusive education.As practitioners, researchers and policymakers, these diverse settings, practices, experiences and findings offer stakeholders opportunities to engage with the heterogeneity of education beyond the expectations of mainstream provision and to consider how to develop and ensure access to quality education for all.We would like to thank the authors for their timely, authentic and thought-provoking contributions. Our thanks to the academic reviewers for their supportive and insightful feedback. We are grateful for the opportunity to curate this special issue, which we hope will foster continued discussion and invite further research in these diverse and important but often overlooked modes of education.

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