waldorf steiner

[heninthemidden]

hi,

anyone had good experience of waldorf steiner education system?

I don't want to make SWS 'better'.

I want people to be aware that private schools in the UK can be run in an incredibly haphazard way and that it seems that SOME SWS's are run like this.

I want to protect children and their families who might wander unwittingly into a very chaotic schooling system while trying to find something more caring and child centred for their dc's.

I want families to understand that although SWE has been around for decades, many of the teachers in these schools have not been.

I want people to understand that in a school with no management structure it is very difficult to hold anyone accountable for anything.

I don't contribute very often theCaty cos my experience of SWE does not leave me with anything much to debate about.

And finally, in my situation, and in the situation of many of the families posting here, I hold the school 100% accountable for what happened.

My dcs have been in education for 8 years now in a number of different situations and we have never had any major issues or problems. I'm pretty easy going, am very invloved in my local community and find it easy to get on with all sorts of people. Our SWS experience was a circus and I was very encouraged by the school to blame myself and my children for the mess we found ourselves in.

The only blame I lay at my door is that I didn't u-turn straight out of that insane place.

It's about time that SWS's stood up and took responsiblity for the messes they create and stopped blaming the children. (Maybe they should review their 'training')

FFS! (that means for fuck's sake, before you ask)

PS

I do not count a rabble of self-appointed, inexperienced, untrained parents as an acceptable form of management structure for a school.

Maria,
Here a saying for disillusioned people.
"If you are not part of the solution you become part of the problem".
It is beyond me why you bother Maria.
It is always easier to criticise than work towards a solution. (my late mum told me that)
Certainly with my class I work towards the latter.

thecaty-interesting choice of words I think-disillusionment. To work toward a solution when one is disillusioned, would seem to me, to require either the abandonment of one's sense of reality or one's ideals. A difficult thing, no doubt.

Certainly it is better to work towards a solution, I am hoping the school get back to me this week having taken me seriously and not dissmissing me, then hopefully we can work together to sort this out properly.

However Maria does not need to sort things out, nor do I. I am choosing to give them the oppotunity to prove themselves, but it is debatable that I even should be. am 'Just an (ex) parent'. Not qualified to do this. Social services have interviened, but that is in relation to a specific child. If the school show anything less than total willingness then I am not going to try anymore and go to Ofsted and solicitors. Maybe I should anyway...maybe I am just adding to the parents in charge brings chaos situation, maybe it would be best to skip that stage...

Away until Friday now for a much needed break. Have a good week all.

Is Steiner education free or must parents pay fees?

Please leave out the platitudes theCaty. Of course critics are part of a solution (umm feminism, racism, slavery, bullying in schools, child abuse, the labour movement). Nothing can move on without people who are angry enough to stand up and shout about it. True, I'm not going to modernise SWE, but maybe someone who still cares about it and who can see the problems that we are ranting about will.

The reason I still care is cos I bump into families going through what we went through with this particular school almost every month and I want it to stop.

I find your tone extremely patronising. You know nothing about me. I parted on extremely good terms with most people and teachers at the SWS I was at. Most of them understood exactly why I left and were at great pains to point out to me that it was possible to have much better experiences with SWE. I have no problem believing that but I find your glib and presumptuous posts obnoxious.

SWE education was not for me. I hadn't quite got the whole anthroposophy thing, but this is not why I left. I have no issue with schools being based on religious beliefs so long as they are open about it and I know plenty of non-religious people in religious schools who are happy to take the bits that work for them. I wasn't keen on the verses and cultural attitudes which I eventually understood stemmed from anthroposophy but having moved my dc's once I was reluctant to move them again and would probably have overlooked the bells and smells for a few more years.

What I am annoyed about is and the reason I left was due to the utter lack of professionalism and accountability in my particular school. To give you the benefit of the doubt, theCaty, I would say that you have to be on the receiving end of such incompetence to actually believe that it is possible that a school is run this way in 21 century UK.

I would have thought that people who care about SWE would be the first to want to sort these messes out. It's easy to ignore me and think I'm part of the 'problem'. Whenever anyone dares to criticise the lack of SEN provision, child protection training, anti bullying policies, health and safety policies some people at our school always said they were 'part of the problem'. That's because 'the problem' to them was unhappy parents. This is not in itself a problem. The problem is the miserable catalogue of events that result in unhappy parents and actually, these parents talking about these events will be part of the solution.

Blueshoes - Unless you are at Hereford it's fee paying.

Isenhart, thanks .

"I do not count a rabble of self-appointed, inexperienced, untrained parents as an acceptable form of management structure for a school."

A self-selecting and therefore self-perpetuating Board of Trustees is the defining characteristic of an independent school.

thecaty

Your posts are becoming more and more contradictory

"I do not deny for one moment that you had bad experiences."

"and felt not much of what you wrote about a year ago on blogs was either true or bore any relevance to her education"

Or... is it that you believe some people but not others?
Why would that be?

Did you eat a bowl of crazy for breakfast?

Are you a teacher of made-upology at the school of Narnia Wardrobe?

You know what? I have a morbib fascination with the truth.

And those who call themselves educators have an accountability which Steiner schools seem adept at shifting.

Maria
Your posts are so good they brought a lump to my throat.
Your point about people who care enough to change it might is well taken; if they take the blinkers from their eyes and listen,; if the spiritual complacence was replaced by genuine attention to the children in their care...

And it's always heartening and moving to hear others whose dc's have been regurgitated by Steiner and brushed themselves off and got on with it.

Tizian -

Huh? It takes a special kind of incompetance to distort the meaning of this.....

"The anthroposophical society in Great Britain continues to further the knowledge and development of anthroposophy, that is to say the spirtual science which formed the subject matter of the writings and teachings fo Dr Rudolf Steiner and to promote its application in the fields of education"

Blueshoes
Hereford Steiner school Academy
The local schools are closing.
"the Steiner school is located miles away from the socially disadvantaged parts of the county, where a number of schools needed replacement buildings, which could not be afforded because the county does not have the money. Herefordshire is one of the worst-funded education authorities in Britain.

... the villagers question whether £16m on a new building for 330 children is a sensible use of public money."

It will be a beautiful building though... curvy, lots of wood, spiritual... NOT...

Isenhart - Is this true? In the independent schools I attended as a child, most of the governors/ trustees were not parents. I'm not sure how the parent governors came into their positions, I assumed they were elected, but I could be wrong. At state schools parent governors are elected by the parent body while others are appointed by the LEA and the governing body.

At our SWS it was all put up for grabs - you know, like filling stalls at the Christmas fete? I find it really hard to believe that this is how it is done at most SWS's... but after the jelly men on the moon I can believe anything

Believe me, at the SWS I was at continuity was not a striking feature of the trustees - it was a hot potato of people jumping from mandate to mandate as issues got too hot to handle. No teachers rolled over, so no teacher had been in the school for longer than 4 years (other than the KG teachers). In fact I think that this extrordinary fractured nature of the people in charge of the school is why the school cannot climb out of its rut despite the sustained effort and determination of many people. The same mistakes are made over and over again, by the time anyone learns anything useful they are ready to throw in the towel or have become so frustrated that they can no longer function effectively.

As far as I know-Maria33-this is true for all independent schools including SWS's. Is this article true?

Isenhart, I don't know - but this is interesting in the light of this debate and suggests that SWS's aren't the only independent schools with these issues.

Also at Michael Hall (the first well known SWS I randomly googled) it seems that management is elected....

I also looked at the schools I attended as a child and all the governors were nominated by businesses, academic institutions or the LA. The biographies of these people were pretty impressive. No schools I looked at just seem to take whichever parent signed up first - people were either nominated or elected.

Here's another one.

School associations, believe it or not, provide best practice information to independent schools in areas including health and safety. We have, in the states, both national and state associations of independent schools. i.e. the NAIS. I don't know if you have something comparable in the UK-here they are usually accrediting organizations.

I don't see anything on the Michael Hall page that indicates to me that their Corporate Trustee is elected. This is the body who bears ultimate responsibility for the philosophy, resources, and programs of the Michael Hall SWS. Again, as far as I know.

Maria- that's my experience too- there was always an election, and I assume they candidates were nominated and seconded etc.

Some Steiner schools have trusts I think, with sub commitees, for fund raising, recruiting, finances, co-ordinating groups for festivals and cleaning duties etc; very often parents, and not usually people from "outside" as far as I know.

Of course, if there were people from the local community, it wouold all be quite different and transparent.

As it is, transparency isn't a word that comes to mind.

I took a look atthe NAIS board blurb.
Independent schools in the states definitely have self-selecting and self-perpetuating Boards. I've never seen one that has an election but this article says they do exist. Also-this article mentions the possibility of appointments-the SWS's that I have been involved with did not have trustee appointments.

"A very small number of U.S. schools, but a relatively high proportion of international schools and those in British Columbia, populate boards via the direct election of trustees by parents and others in the school. While something of an anathema to stateside independent schools, the election approach is sometimes a reflection of a desire to replicate the U.S. public school experience abroad, or has roots in local law (British Columbia) or an attempt to embody fully egalitarian ideals."

Well, I only have UK experience to go on.

Anyway, all that aside, the way in which our SWschool was managed was bizarre. Parents with no relevant expertise, who had been involved in the school (and in SWE) less than a year were taking on key managerial roles. I am sure that this cannot be common place and if it is, well, that explains the all the pissed off people on this thread and beyond...

Perhaps it's time for a re-think.

Having local educators from outside the SW community would have been a great asset, but as you say, Northern, I suspect that would never have been allowed.

Or not even educators- I mean like school governors, who know the ethos of schools and have a tremendous input in so many ways.

Certainly the primary school where our youngest goes, this is a wonderful asset, and is appreciated as such.

And on that subject, I didn't like the way thecaty said this a few posts ago
"now wants her child that was pushed about in state school to have the best education she could wish for her child."

It really does no good to belittle the state system; particularly when they work so hard with the children who come from Steiner school, many of whom can barely read or write.
They give infinite care and attention to these children to help them catch up, using valuble time and resources.
I have nothing but praise for the school where my dd is, and the help and encouragement she's had from them; she's now a happy confident child who loves school.

Your comment also makes out steiner school is "superior" in some way; aware you think so, but many don't.

BTW Isenhart. Perhaps I should clarify:

at our school there was nearly no management at all (2 trustees and college 5 teachers) despite the fact that it had been open over 10 years. I believe that this had not always been the case but for the time I was there (2.5 years) there was no management. There was College and two unlucky b*s that had been roped in where angels fear to tread. (all credit to them, they worked damn hard).

Anyway, parents got itchy about the lack of management, so after about a year of prevarication the school set up what felt like a mandate group jumble sale. We were all invited to sign up for the mandates we wanted. Like at a Christmas Fete planning meeting. People did and so we ended up with completely inexperienced, relatively new group of parents taking charge of a school which even the most experienced education manager would have had a job trying to pull into line.

I left.

Really, I've seen better organised bake sales.

I know that theCaty will tell me I should have jumped in both feet but in the words of St Francis (see I can pull out the ancient cliches too, I know how Steiner schools love them)

Lord grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can, and
the wisdom to know the difference.

Definite shortfall on the wisdom front at the SWS we were at.

Yes, I'm alarmed to find some Independent schools in the UK appear to be so unaccountable and that while Ofsted inspects them, it can't offer any assistance when things go wrong. This rather gloomy fact explains a lot. Parents of children in those private schools inspected by the Independent Schools Council (answerable to Ofsted) have at least the benefit of an umbrella organisation.

Steiner schools are not members of any organisation similar to the ISC

So to whom are they accountable? The SWSF?

The article Maria highlighted suggested to me that there needs to be greater scrutiny of all independent schools AND academy schools. It's good to know there's an Independent Safeguarding Authority which proposes to do just that. I hope it does.

Maria - my dc is at a small, private school and I'm comfortable with what happens there because I trust and respect the staff: their behaviour is open and accountable and the ethos of the school is evident and openly discussed. Staff often stay for years, there isn't the high turnover of pupils that I've noticed at the Steiner schools my friends and my own family have encountered. I'm convinced that the problem is with Steiner education itself, whatever systems are put in place, for all the reasons we've already discussed.

Tizian - there are no conspiracies. People are so desperate to talk about themselves and their 'esoteric' knowledge that very little they do is secret. So the link between anthroposophy and Steiner schools, far from being a conspiracy, is obvious.

Some really experienced managers would have been invaluable to our school. There were always willing and able people offering time, assistance and expertise, but they were always snubbed or ignored. In the end I concluded that they wanted the school to carry on in this haphazard way...

The insular attitude in SWE will do more damage than a few cross mums on line will ever manage.

That's why I applaud the state funding move. At least it will bring about dialogue and more openess.