A Start-up Proposal

Initially a Natural Path school requires a sponsor who accepts the education imperative.

Once a sponsor arrives, then there needs to be a Vanguard Team. This team would look at the initial logistics in setting up the school - appropriate location, possible catchment, etc. Once a Vanguard report has been written, the team moves into the location and begins work on staffing. It is essential that subject area heads be in place to determine the curriculum.

An initial curriculum brochure needs to be worked out so that a management team can begin the process of "catching the catchment". Whilst the department heads in coordination with the marketing wing of the management team had been working on the brochure, the management team need to work on a publicity and student recruitment strategy.

Once these strategies have been approved by the sponsors, then staffing needs to increase to provide the core of the curriculum. Many of the concepts presented for the Natural Path are highly conceptual - they have to be. This is not a problem as much of the established education system is based on ill-defined aims that have in the end developed into this appalling accumulation by qualification hijack that is now seen in the West. However if the conceptual framework is not substantiated then it also could be hijacked by idealists frustrated with contemporary alternatives.

Clearly such a curriculum programme will have major alterations with time, what is essential is that the programme itself is substantive to begin with. Typical in existing education ideas are floated, idealists grab onto them and then go into the classroom to flounder as there is no meat on the bones. As no learning then occurs the valid idea is lost. With a substantive programme in place learning will occur, how that learning can improve is an ongoing development that should occur everywhere in education but the first students will have a proper education to begin with even if it could be improved on.

As parents will have to pay for such schooling it is essential that they see something substantive as a product.

At the same time if we don't have a substantive programme that can achieve the results for the professed ideals then we have no right to begin in the first place. We do not want to produce students "Lost in Nature".

Natural Path schools need to be an improvement and not a grave of idealism. Once we have a substantive curriculum we can consider appropriate staffing based on predicted numbers of students. Administration needs to be efficient and not conceptual. When a prospective parent contacts the school, they will know it is new but they need to know that on arrival a new student will learn as is the Natural way. This confidence can only come from clear and thought-through preparation understood and applied by an efficient front-end administration who also believe that the Natural Path is the Way.