An Overview of the Hereford Steiner Academy Project

Each Steiner school is unique and yet shares core values and inspirations. In the UK this commonality is expressed through a national organisation – the Steiner/Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) – which offers advice and support to its member schools. For many years the UK Steiner schools movement has dreamt of achieving better recognition and wider acceptance, and over the years various attempts have been made to explore how Steiner schools might be State funded. When New Labour came to power in 1997, the moment seemed right to begin a more focused lobbying effort for public funding. The case received a sympathetic hearing and in March 2000 the Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett, announced the intention to look at how Steiner schools might join the maintained sector. In the following July the then Minister for Schools, Estelle Morris, instigated efforts to establish three pilot voluntary-aided Steiner schools. In the meantime the government commissioned an academic study into Steiner education which was undertaken by the University of the West of England (Steiner Schools in England). There followed negotiations with several Local Education Authorities but these did not bear fruit due to many technical problems. To overcome these difficulties, the Minister, in September 2003, agreed to initially fund one Steiner school in England under the Academy legislation. A particular hope was that this should be an inner-city Steiner school, but this proved impossible because of the requirement to provide a site. Thus a Steiner school in a rural situation – where site issues were easier to resolve – became the best option. When we at the Hereford Waldorf School heard that we might become the first Steiner Academy, we reacted with a mixture of excitement and caution. The Hereford school was started just over 21 years ago and – like most Steiner schools in the UK – has only survived because of the hard work and commitment of parents and teachers alike. Although we are an independent school we are aware that our financial limits restrict how far our education provision can grow and we realise that government-funding could release our potential. The Minister, David Milliband, gave reassurances that our curriculum and educational approach would not be compromised by government. By May 2004, following an intense process of discussion and consultation, the whole school community agreed to submit an Expression of Interest which eventually led, in September 2005, to the Feasibility Study stage.   Part of the character of Academies is that they have a Sponsor who plays a key role in the direction and management of the school. In our case the SWSF agreed to become the Sponsor, thus giving further reassurances that the Steiner Academy will not only retain its integrity but be able to evolve in the right spirit. A Project Steering Group comprising the three equal partners in this project (Government, SWSF and the Hereford Waldorf School) is now overseeing the Feasibility Study stage and under its wing is a project management company (Navigant Consulting) and a design team (Fielden Clegg Bradley). All the long years of lobbying, all the meetings, and all the soul searching will soon result in the formation of a contract. If the Hereford school, the Fellowship and the government sign it then a new, Steiner-inspired, ecologically-sensitive school will be built, and a new phase of Steiner education in the UK will be launched.

 

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