The Non-School: in defense of a different kind of education

While public spending on education in Spain has risen in recent years, data from the latest PISA report calls into question the effectiveness of traditional approaches. In 2023, scores dropped significantly compared with the previous edition across most participating countries. For Spain—already far from being a star pupil—the results were its worst since the study began in 2000. The OECD also reminds us that Spain has one of the highest rates of early school leaving and grade repetition in Europe.

These figures, combined with today’s socioeconomic reality and the changing nature of work, give momentum to critics of the current system who are searching for new community-based models and collective responses to the educational challenges of both present and future. Alternative teaching methods, though not new—think of Montessori, dating back to the early 20th century—are increasingly seen as a hopeful way forward.

Although there is no single definition of “alternative education,” attempts to categorize it converge on the idea of a set of approaches that, while drawing on aspects of traditional schooling, seek to subvert the model to promote values such as freedom, respect, autonomy, creativity, empowerment, and participation.

Many methods fall under this umbrella. One example is the Amara Berri System, created in San Sebastián in the 1970s by teacher Loli Anaut. Amid the approval of Spain’s General Education Law and a growing wave of reformist pedagogy, she took charge of the Amara Berri public nursery school in 1979 with the goal of reshaping the traditional model then in place.

Together with a team of ambitious teachers and educators, she launched a new approach that by 1990 had become consolidated under the Basque Government’s Educational Innovation Center. At Amara Berri, the school is conceived as a society in which pupils are placed at the center of the educational project, ensuring their holistic development and preparing them not only for what happens inside the classroom but also for life beyond it. I was fortunate to attend the school from ages 2 to 12, and I could go on indefinitely about its methodology: tailoring the curriculum to student interests, fostering independent work, or mixing pupils of different ages within classes—just some of the practices highlighted in a La Sexta feature on the school more than a decade ago.

Another key factor behind Amara Berri’s success—now a network of 19 schools across the Basque Country and expanding into other regions—is that it has always been a public school. Accessibility is the cornerstone of any genuinely inclusive project.

In the traditional tug-of-war between advocates of state-planned education and defenders of parental choice, two central debates emerge. One pits outright opposition to the “old school” against renewed defenses of the public model; the other divides those who see alternative pedagogies as transformative from those who dismiss them as elitist projects that worsen class inequality. Indeed, though official data is lacking, many of the schools adopting such methods are private.

Political parties crystallize these competing visions: some champion inclusive public education and protection of local, multilingual models, while others push for regulatory reform, linguistic balance, and free choice. Unsurprisingly, the public debate mirrors this split.

So, can these alternative models offer a way out of the shortcomings of the traditional system? The truth is there is no clear answer. For them to do so, more resources and infrastructure will be needed, along with motivated teachers capable of innovation, a shift in the collective mindset about what “alternative” means, and, crucially, a move to bring these innovative projects out of the private sphere and into a bold, experimental public school system.

—Lucía Martínez