Steiner School behaviour deterioration

[Hannah1110897]

Hello,

I have never posted in one of these places before so I don't know all of your lingo.

I have a little boy who is 8 and who has been in the private school sector since 3 years old. I took him out of the prep school to try Steiner because he was struggling academically but his behaviour at the Steriner school has deteriorated massively.

The school takes a totally different approach to teaching (which I wanted) but these children have SO much freedom they are basically feral. They don't wear a uniform, they call teachers by their first names, there is no discipline or consequences approach to naughty behaviour. They use crayons instead of pencils. I feel like he is being treated like a toddler and so he is acting like one. My son has not progressed academically all year, he is refusing to do his work at school and randomly gets up and walks out of the classroom whenever he feels like it and there is no punishment at school for this.

Other mums are telling me to 'trust the process' but I am at my wits end. He is becoming rude and disrespectful at home, he isn't following my rules, he is going off the rails completely. When I tried to raise my concerns I was told that children misbehave where they feel 'safe' but I am not buying that at all. So my son feels safer at school than he does at home? eye roll. I feel like he is taking advantage of the situation and escalating his behaviour because there have been no appropriate consequences. He's trying to find the boundaries and what he is finding is that there aren't any boundaries. Its chaos. But the school and the parents keep putting it back on to me and saying I need to give him more attention at home (I am a single working professional mum with two children and no dad in the picture) or I need to trust the process.

Has anyone else had a similar experience moving to Steiner from prep or mainstream ed?

Any advice would be appreciated because I am inclined to pull him out of the school right now.

Thank in advance xx

Dd's Steiner school was great the LA paid £75k pa for her place so imagine they were fully compliant with all regulations. Dd did the expected GCSEs but she gained a love of and a broad knowledge of different textiles methods and techniques which she is pursuing now she has left school. Dd and her friends were really happy there after all having poor experiences in mainstream school.

How do you get the LA to pay 75k pa for school? Double the price of Eton. Am i missing something?

The LEA will quite often pay mainstream private school fees for children with SEN.

Specialist schools are often a lot more. Unfortunately these schools are not at all likely to follow all regulations, put children in for GCSEs etc.

People often suggest Steiner for our DS who has SEN but the last thing he needs is a school with no boundaries.

All of that. My brother went to a Steiner school, I was at a state school. He'd missed a lot of early primary school due to a chronic health condition, and taken behind, so my parents moved him to a 'more caring' environment.

When we visited his school it gave me the creeps. All the identical paintings, all the identical dance/pe styles. The rigidity and 'sameness' was the exact opposite of creativity.

He had the same teacher all through school. Great if the kid and teacher like each other. That wasn't the case for him.

He left with no qualifications whatsoever, and that has affected his life through the long term.

My children are not Steiner educated but my friend’s children were, they are now architects and scientists.

Age 0-7 is about learning through play as they do in other countries. The U.K. tends to push traditional academic work prematurely unnecessarily.

I have found behaviour in local steiner school children good, there seems a big emphasis on nurturing. This is a million miles from the unhealthy dog eat dog dynamics of my local state school.

The LA paid it through her EHCP, they now fund tutors, TA, SALT, OT, mentor all materials and resources at home instead through her EHCP. To get them to do so you fight and go to Tribunal more often than not.

You need to remember that often the parents who pay for Steiner have kids who can’t thrive in mainstream education and may have significant SEN / other needs. Many are glorified SN schools and I do know of at least 2 schools that take LEA funding for SEN students. This can he even more marked in areas where there are a lot of good prep choices. The calm, academically ‘able’ kids get picked off and then Steiner gets what remains.

However, Steiner schools do eventually produce confident children who are eager to learn and know how to think for themselves - especially with boys who tend to get left behind in traditional settings. I love the Steiner approach and if I still lived in a Steiner area I would 100% have enrolled DS to one. But he has ADHD and needs some element of flexibility in his schoolday (which his prep currently provides).

I don’t think the op has any option but to find another school. Clearly this one isn’t suitable. Ultimately not many parents do believe in this process so these schools are few and far between. It’s is almost certainly easier to find a nurturing private school without stellar destinations. So if I was the op I would start looking immediately.

@hiredandsqueak @drspouse thanks both. Very helpful for me at the mo!

Do you think your child has special needs? Some of his behaviour sounds a bit extreme? Could you get his assessed and go from there? I think at the moment he may find any school difficult and to be honest they might find him difficult. You may need to go somewhere that have experience of SEN you just want him to be happy and not frustrated.

Visited the Feltham St Michael Steiner school yesterday for a tour for my homeschooled 8 year old daughter. As a qualified Art teacher who has tried hard to equip my child with the best literacy skills possible, valuing near handwriting, spelling and written composition, I was astounded by the few pages of English and maths work lumped together in giant form in coloured crayons on unlined paper. The children were dressed all in white and walking around in a circle in the garden following the chants of a teacher. I was looking for academic rigour with an artistic ethos but left sadly disappointed. Incidentally the paintings were all carbon copies of each other, not evidencing a commitment to personal expression.

They don't wear a uniform, they call teachers by their first names, there is no discipline or consequences approach to naughty behaviour.

The fir5st two are just fine - and there are many schools like this - but it need not follow that there is a lack of discipline.

A properly run Steiner school is disciplined - the curriculum is geared up to be more age-appropriate, in the sense of letting children develop in a more natural way and not ramming formal learning down too early, but that does not mean a lack of discipline - it just means they are doing different things at different stages.

If this is how the school you saw is operating then it is not a good Steiner school, of which there are4 many.

The children were dressed all in white and walking around in a circle in the garden following the chants of a teacher. This will have been a eurythmy lesson - they do not go around like this all the time!

The Steiner School near us is state-funded.

Some of their alumni are brain surgeons, business people, lawyers, teachers - they go to 6th form college after GCSEs. The college always says how confident and imaginative and pro-active they are in their learning.

I live in a village with a big Steiner school in it.

My middle child (teen) goes to the local secondary - with plenty of ex-Steiner kids, and attended the local primary with lots of ex-Steineys too. My youngest (pre-school) went to a Steiner-inspired nursery (the local one).

Not saying it’s a wrong choice, for some people it obviously works amazingly, but don’t kid yourself it’s schooling choice made by the child - it’s 100% choice led by the parent. Any kid is going to choose a school with no rules and Eurythmics over standardised testing, but as a parent, you need to be logical on what is actually better for your child long term.

Personally, I find the Steiner view weirdly stifling and rigid, despite being marketed as free, easy and dancing with the wind. It always feels a bit ‘Stepford Wives meets Woodstock’ to me, with more than a whiff of weed. (But that may well be the location…)

Mine would be out and in mainstream, but maybe I’m a cynic!

No experience of these schools but I don’t think all kids will thrive in this sort of environment.

my son wouldn’t - he needs boundaries and will push them if he can.

he currently goes to two nurseries one of which is Montessori based and one of which isn’t. At the Montessori one if there is poor behaviour their response seems to be to talk to him about expressing his emotions.

at the non Montessori nursery he just behaves himself - there are firm boundaries in place - we get very little poor behaviour from him there at all.

you know what you need to do I think!

This sounds exactly like me, bar the early health issues. I’m now aged 47 and in an almost minimum wage job due to lack of qualifications. I am 90% certain I have ADHD which has also impacted me but I remember at school being absolutely wild and no one in authority doing anything. The situations I was getting myself into!! 😔I was a full time border as well and was allowed to come and go as I pleased. It actually makes me quite angry now when I think about it- not to mention the cost to my family!!

Exactly - the art is pretty scary - did you ask about the curved corners of the paper? Apparently points are not good 🙄

Not saying it’s a wrong choice, for some people it obviously works amazingly, but don’t kid yourself it’s schooling choice made by the child - it’s 100% choice led by the parent.

Every school that a child goes to is parent choice - state, Steiner, Montessori whatever - all of them are chosen by parents. So the Steiner school is no different in that regard.

Any kid is going to choose a school with no rules and Eurythmics over standardised testing, but as a parent, you need to be logical on what is actually better for your child long term.

Steiner schools do not have "no rules" - like all other schools some are better disciplined than others, but they certainly do not have no rules! "Standardised testing" is rightly not something a child would choose - it is not what many parents would choose if they had the chance because they know it benefits children not one jot.

@ArtGuidance we considered Steiner and also Quaker schools but in the end we had a similar reaction to you and went for a school which has lots of the positives I think people associate with Steiner schools with we felt not the potential downside.

Ours is a former theosophist school in Letchworth (St Christopher), no uniform, vegetarian school and staff known by first names to pupils. It is a creative set up with small classes and very pupil centred. They produce amazing art portfolios and there is an art scholarship. However there is good academic attainment in traditional exams.

My son was at a Steiner for a few years, in toddler group initially, then kindergarten. I loved the ethos, and he loved all the activities, but there were so many problems I had to take him out.

The school was a very small one, constantly on the brink of bankruptcy, so parents evenings always became about fundraising instead of schooling. There were parents who had done no research on Steiner and anthroposophy and thought that their kids were going to be free to run around and do what they wanted. These kids would spoil things for the others and the parents would get very shirty if they were asked to control them (this was in toddler group); in fact I think a lot of them got away with it because the school was scared to lose their fees.

Then there were the teachers. Those who themselves were Steiner educated were great, and they were strict with boundaries. Other teachers had come to it from the state system, or as well- meaning parents, and didn't have the immersive background I felt was necessary. They were less boundaried and seemed to teach the system, without really understanding the ethos behind it.

The great teachers were constantly being harassed by the parents of the feral kids who thought they were being too strict. When asked to join a reading group to find out more about the anthroposophical approach to education they'd shrug and say Steiners' writings were impenetrable. And carry on demanding 'freedom'.

Really, without parental understanding and support, let alone the constant financial issues, they were on a hiding to nothing. It was so disappointing. Shortly after we left I met a recently retired teacher from the local secondary school, and she asked me to reconsider...she'd had a number of kids from the Steiner in her class and loved them. They were curious, questioning and thought for themselves in a way that others didn't, she said.

I think anyone who considers Steiner education for their child should really read up on it first. Not Google press reports , but buy some of the books about the approach to child rearing and education. It would give prospective parents a more realistic expectation of the system, and weed out the free rangers. It definitely isn't for everyone.

Thank you for that balanced post.

Two of my chidlren went to Steiner schools for varying lengths of time and at different stages in their school careers. Both gained a huge amount from their time there.

One asked what the primary school was like as she played with chidlren who went there, and we said she was welcome to go and see. She did and felt that she would like to go there - so did. But she had a wonderful time in the first few years of the Steiner school and talks fondly of those years.

The other went there at age 9 because she was so desperately unhappy at her school. She stayed till she was 14 and left to a rural comprehensive to do her GCSEs as the school at that time was too small to offer these.It is now offering GCSEs and has the security of being state funded, but she was there just too early to benefit from that. But it restored her confidence and fed her artistic and musical talents and was an all round benefit to her.

Our take on the philosophy is that we did not buy into it all, but recognised the benefit of the education system that flowed from it. The Steiner philosophy is not taught to the children, but it informs the attitude to education. For instance, they believe that chidlren should not be taught formal letters/maths etc. too early as it damages the "incarnating soul" - I did not buy into that but absolutely agreed withy the principle and the resulting practice. And when these subjects are introduced it is done in a gentle way that relates to tinges they know and can understand, rather than in the abstract. That comes later. I also approved of the concept that art and science can go hand in hand and should not be seen as lying as subjects apart.

It was simply a question of keeping an open mind.

But discipline is key to any school and that too is part of Steiner philosophy. An undisciplined Steiner school is a bad school in exactly the way it would be with a state school.