Lucy Stephens

One Question
Lucy Stephens

Founder and Director

The New School

Lucy is the Founder and Director of The New School, an educational charity and democratic school in South London.  Lucy has spent a number of years researching what a school model of education could look like when it is structured in a way that values relationships, equity and inclusion. Our education system today categorises this educational model as ‘alternative’, making most settings private, and therefore cost prohibitive; often excluding the young people most advantaged by this relational model. With a growing mental health crisis in the UK, Lucy is interested in what we can learn from The New School – a non-fee-paying alternative educational model in action – as well as the broader social and emotional outcomes that are generated, in order to challenge the current educational narrative in the UK and better support teachers and
young people.