Following the news that there could, potentially, be government funding for the school, this year's open day attracted many more visitors than usual, and it is likely that they would have been impressed by the pupils' calm and confidence, and their powers of concentration.This, teachers make clear, is because they are brought up from the beginning in Steiner ways. There will be no selection on ability, admissions will be based on parents' commitment to the philosophy, and the role of a head, as a financial manager, will have to be worked out, as Steiner schools are run as teacher democracies.At the school, Steiner-qualified teachers will be expected to work towards graduate status if they do not have a degree, but - to the annoyance of the teachers unions - qualified teacher status is seen as a national curriculum-based qualification and inappropriate. The Government has accepted that Key Stage 1 tests are irrelevant to the Steiner curriculum, and that any Key Stage 2 testing would have to be flexible, and the results not for publication. Estelle Morris, when she was Education Secretary, and Andrew Adonis, now an education minister, have pushed for it to happen, but attempts to set up a voluntary-aided school in London foundered, and three years ago it was decided to go down a different route.Now, plans are being worked out to make the Hereford Waldorf School in Much Dewchurch, currently housed in a converted barn, a new, all-in Academy taking about 300 pupils aged five to 16 But there are tricky issues to negotiate. In fact, they exist on the margins of educational consciousness - something, people tend to think, to do with tree-hugging.In fact, the framework of Steiner schools is closely prescribed, and built on the view that a child's creative, spiritual and moral dimensions need as much attention as their intellectual ones. Steiner teachers want to protect their ideas; the Government needs its schools to be accountable.So far it has been agreed that the Steiner curriculum will not be compromised, provided that pupils are taught English, maths and science - no problem, since the Herefordshire pupils already take public exams in these subjects.
"The Steiner curriculum is a therapeutic curriculum," stresses Sylvie Sklan, development director of the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship "It is perfect for disadvantaged children. It should be available in the inner cities." "There is definitely scope for two-way learning," says Philip Woods, professor of education at the University of the West of England, who has just completed a major study on Steiner schooling, commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills. "And learning across boundaries is a significant theme of Government policy."There are 31 Steiner schools in the UK and Ireland, but they have never had any public money, unlike their counterparts in other European countries. A field in Herefordshire could become the birthplace of one of the most radical departures our school system has seen.
Right now, it is just buttercups and cow parsley, but if current plans stay on track, this field will soon be home to the first state-funded Steiner school in Britain. Last week, we reported that the Government was making common cause with the privately funded Montessori schools movement to rescue a struggling state primary school in Manchester. Today, we can reveal that it is getting into bed with the private Steiner movement. That means the Government that gave us curriculum tests and league tables will be supporting a school where tests and exams are almost non-existent, and where play and dance are seen as every bit as important as formal classroom learning.And if - as Steiner supporters hope - this coming together of the two systems allows some of these ideas to filter into mainstream schools, the children of our noisy, socially fractured world could benefit immeasurably. What a pity they will have to wait nearly a decade before those primary school children now taking up language subjects get out into the jobs market.. As if to emphasise the insanity of the Government's decision to axe compulsory language lessons for 14- to 16-year-olds before boosting their take-up in primary schools, a new survey by the Centre for Information on Language Teaching shows that one in five firms are losing business to overseas competitors because of their employees' lack of language skills.