In a recent article published in the British Educational Research Journal, I explore how children’s agency operates within England’s primary education system, and propose the concept of ‘structured freedom’ as a framework for enabling meaningful participation while maintaining educational standards (Manyukhina, 2025).

Beyond the agency–structure dichotomy

For too long, discussions about children’s agency in education have been framed as a choice between structure and freedom – either we maintain rigorous educational frameworks or we enable children’s autonomy. This binary is evident in the ongoing tension between the emphasis placed by Ofsted (England’s school inspection authority) on comprehensive curriculum coverage and recent calls for greater student agency in learning, where schools often feel they must choose between meeting inspection requirements and enabling meaningful student choice. Our three-year study involved 18 children aged 6 to 11 across three contrasting primary schools in England – an academy (a state-funded school with greater autonomy), an independent fee-paying school, and a local authority-maintained state school. The findings challenge the structure–agency dichotomy, demonstrating that thoughtfully designed structures can actively enable rather than constrain children’s agency. Instead of choosing between rigid lesson plans or unstructured ‘free choice’ time, successful schools designed structured opportunities for decision-making – from student-led selection of learning activities to collaborative curriculum development – that made agency both meaningful and manageable.

‘For too long, discussions about children’s agency in education have been framed as a choice between structure and freedom – either we maintain rigorous educational frameworks or we enable children’s autonomy.’

Applying a critical realist perspective (Archer, 2000, 2003), which emphasises the interaction between structure and agency to understand how social and individual outcomes emerge, we examined how agency emerges through complex interactions across three domains: the structural conditions created by curriculum frameworks and institutional policies; the daily practices that materialise in classrooms; and children’s lived experiences. This analysis revealed how different institutional approaches create varying possibilities for children’s agency.

Agency in practice: Lessons from three contrasting schools

Our research uncovered striking differences in how schools approach agency while working within England’s national curriculum framework. In the academy school, children’s decision-making was systematically integrated into learning processes – from curriculum development through to lesson design. The independent school maintained clear boundaries, enabling agency in non-academic domains while keeping tight control over core subjects. The state school, despite operating in a challenging context in a deprived area, created spaces for children’s agency through the Open Futures programme and philosophical inquiry.

Importantly, we found that when structures were thoughtfully designed, children developed a stronger sense of agency through direct experience of meaningful choice. As one child expressed, ‘I feel quite powerful because I get to pick my independent activity.’ This experiential sense of power – children feeling their choices matter – became central to our framework for structured freedom. Conversely, when opportunities for influence were inconsistent or tokenistic – where children’s voices were solicited but not genuinely heard or acted upon – children disengaged. It was disheartening to hear one child share, ‘You just choose things and then you just do them, you don’t think much about it … it doesn’t really matter.’ These contrasting experiences reveal how institutional approaches directly shape children’s willingness to engage with opportunities for agency.

Structured freedom: A framework for practice

These findings led us to develop the concept of ‘structured freedom’ – a practical framework for systematically supporting children’s agency through four key principles:

1. Three-domain integration: Aligning structural conditions, daily practices and children’s experiences to create coherent opportunities for meaningful participation.
2. Choice architecture: Creating clear and meaningful opportunities for choice that children can understand and use.
3. Systematic mechanisms for agency: Establishing regular channels for children to influence their education across academic and non-academic domains.
4. Experiential development: Building children’s sense of agency through successful experiences where they see their input makes a real difference to their learning.

Implications for practice

So what does this mean for schools in practice? Our research demonstrates that supporting children’s agency does not require abandoning educational standards or structures. Rather, it demands more thoughtful design of those structures to enable meaningful influence. The question is not whether to have structure or agency, but how to design structures that enable rather than constrain children’s capacity to shape their learning.

For schools navigating standardised curriculum requirements, structured freedom offers a practical approach to balancing competing demands. By implementing systematic mechanisms for children’s participation in curriculum development, creating flexible assessment approaches that value children’s input, such as student-designed success criteria, choice in presentation formats, or peer assessment opportunities and establishing regular channels for collective decision-making, schools can foster genuine agency while maintaining educational standards.

As education systems worldwide increasingly recognise the importance of student agency, our framework offers both theoretical insights into how agency operates within educational structures and practical guidance for implementation in varied contexts.

This blog post is based on the article ‘Children’s agency in England’s primary schools: A case for structured freedom’ by Yana Manyukhina, published in the British Educational Research Journal. The research was funded by the Leverhulme Trust. For a more detailed exploration of these ideas, see our forthcoming book ‘Children’s Agency and the National Curriculum: The Promise of Structured Freedom’.

References

Archer, M. (2000). Being human: The problem of agency. Cambridge University Press.

Archer, M. (2003). Structure, agency and the internal conversation. Cambridge University Press.

Manyukhina, Y. (2025). Children’s agency in England’s primary schools: A case for structured freedom. British Educational Research Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.4182