My association with the school began in 1998, when my wife and I enrolled our daughter as a pupil, but it wasn’t until two or three years later when I joined a study group for parents that I began to get more involved. I was trying to understand more about what lay behind the education and this was the start of a quest that continues to this day.

In 2004 I applied for and was appointed to a part-time role as communications officer for the school. I soon realised that, if I was to do the job properly, I would need to be able to sit in on the meetings of the College of Teachers and listen to their discussions. (For those unfamiliar with Steiner Waldorf education, it should be explained that in many Steiner schools there is no head teacher and the responsibility for running the school resides with those faculty members who wish to take on this additional task.)

RSSKL’s College of Teachers kindly agreed to let me join their meetings so I began to get an insider’s view of how the school was run. College meetings were held on Thursday evenings, just after the weekly meeting open to all staff, which I also attended. At first I listened and observed at the College meetings and, as I was not a teacher, did not say very much; but after a while I began to speak whenever a topic came up about which I knew something. After a year or two the College felt sufficiently comfortable with me that they asked me to chair the meeting – and so I became, as far as I know, the only non-teacher ever to be College Chair in a Steiner school. This I did for around three years, before later taking up a full-time post at the school.

As my role then was part-time, and because my wife and I were paying full fees for our daughter at the school, I needed to take on another job. In 2008 I found part-time work for the other half of the week as communications officer with the executive group of the Steiner Waldorf Schools’ Fellowship (SWSF) and so was able to widen my acquaintance with other Steiner schools in the UK. It was an exciting time to be at SWSF: Christopher Clouder was busy making links with schools around the world and putting the case for Steiner Waldorf education within the European Union; Sylvie Sklan was putting in the spadework that led to the creation of the first publicly-funded Steiner academy schools in England; Janni Nicol was doing wonderful work in Early Years’ education and helping to create understanding in government of the Waldorf approach; Kevin Avison was travelling within the UK and Ireland advising schools on a whole range of issues, while also finding time to develop a quality scheme and arranging for Steiner schools to receive their Ofsted inspections via School Inspection Services Ltd, a new company set up by former HMIs (Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Education); while Jane Avison looked after administrative matters with great efficiency via the SWSF office in Stourbridge. Trevor Mepham and Alan Swindell, both soon to become principals in two of the new Steiner academy schools, were also active in the executive group at various times.

As part of my communications work with SWSF, I started to collect links to news items from around the world about, or of relevance to, Steiner schools . Each Friday during term time I would circulate these links to schools in the UK and Ireland, as well as to quite a long list of individuals who had asked to receive them. Thus it was that I became increasingly aware of the criticisms of Rudolf Steiner and Steiner Waldorf schools that were at that time starting to be widely disseminated online. I was upset by many of these criticisms, which did not accord with my understanding of Steiner or my experience of Waldorf schools. The sheer viciousness of the many misrepresentations I saw online led me to engage with some of these critics, in what with hindsight I now regard as naïve and well-meaning attempts to increase understanding and put the record straight. Today I would claim to have a more nuanced view of these criticisms, some of which were undoubtedly justified.

Back in 2004 a new chair of trustees at RSSKL, the excellent John Doherty (himself a parent at the school), was using his business expertise to steer the ship away from the rocks of financial disaster, caused largely by an over-lenient attitude from the school towards the collection of fees from parents. The trustees appointed a very good new bursar and John Doherty himself started to phone parents who were in arrears. Many of the outstanding fees started to come in, while some parents whose financial position was such that they would never be able to catch up with what was owed, left the school. These actions were not popular in some quarters, including with some members of the College of Teachers, but they saved the school from going bankrupt.

John and his fellow trustees felt with some justification that the College was not sufficiently responsible or knowledgeable about the school finances to continue to decide on such matters; and so the trustees (who are in law responsible for everything that happens in the school) decided to reserve to themselves all decisions about finances, fee levels, bursaries, health and safety, property maintenance etc, while devolving responsibility for pedagogy and curriculum to the College. Their view was that the College did not have time or sufficient expertise to deal with many of the matters related to running the school, such as preparation for Ofsted inspections, employment issues, dealing with complaints and so on. I think it was at about this time that some of the teachers began to resent the work of the trustees, though I should also record that a previous body of trustees had felt it necessary to resign en masse some years earlier, following what they perceived to be persistent and prolonged non-cooperation from the College.

In 2009 John Doherty invited me to take up a new post at the school, that of education facilitator, with responsibility for many of those issues that the trustees felt that College could not look after adequately. I accepted this on a half-time basis so that I could continue with my SWSF work; but it soon became clear that each job in reality required full-time attention so after a while I had to choose between them. I decided to relinquish my SWSF role and concentrate on the job at RSSKL, which had the advantage of allowing me to be at home more often and also, as a full-time member of staff, entitled me to a discount on our daughter’s school fees – which was very helpful for our family finances.

Very soon after taking up the education facilitator post at RSSKL, I was thrown right in at the deep end – a phone call was received from the lead inspector announcing that Ofsted would be sending in an inspection team the following week. This, in the days when Ofsted gave 48 hours’ notice of inspection, meant a frantic, up-all-hours period of work for me to try to get ready. Needless to say, apart from the work of one retired class teacher, the school had made hardly any preparations for this inspection, and I had to fall back on paperwork that had been done for the previous inspection in 2006. Nor did many people on College show the slightest interest in helping me, although I was grateful to the retired class teacher and a couple of other teachers who did take the matter seriously and helped to write some updated material for the inspectors to read.

This Ofsted inspection was the last one to be carried out at the school by “official” Ofsted, all subsequent inspections over the next few years being done by the excellent and highly-experienced former HMIs from School Inspection Services Ltd. (SIS). As an aside, I was always bemused by those critics who suggested that Steiner schools had somehow secured for themselves a more lenient form of inspection by way of SIS taking on the Ofsted contract for the inspection of the independent Steiner schools; this is absolutely wrong. As someone who in later life briefly became a lay inspector with SIS, I can tell you that these ex-HMIs were absolutely the best inspectors I’ve come across – formidably experienced and highly knowledgeable, they knew exactly where any bodies were likely to be buried and they were assiduous in digging out all our weak points. They did this while also taking the trouble to inform themselves about Steiner Waldorf education, and they behaved with charm and courtesy throughout the inspection. They didn’t miss a thing, however, and in their feedback at the end they were not only forensic in their report of what they had seen but – and this is where they really scored –their intention was that the school should find the inspection as useful as possible in identifying areas for improvement. I honestly felt that it was a privilege to be inspected by these people.

This first Ofsted inspection in 2009, however, was not such a happy experience. The lead inspector did not seem to know much about Steiner education, although she had attended some kind of briefing about it, nor did she seem to be much impressed by what she had heard. She did, however, ask me to set up a meeting for all the teachers in the staff room on the day before the inspection proper began, so that she could explain more about the process and answer any questions that the teachers might have. I shall never forget the acute feeling of embarrassment I had when only a handful of teachers bothered to attend this meeting. It was a direct snub to Ofsted by most of the teachers and the lead inspector was keenly aware of it.

This first inspection led to the school being rated as “Satisfactory”, which in Ofsted terms actually means “not good enough.” It was a baptism of fire for me but it also gave some useful indications of those areas for improvement which needed attention. In most schools, this would be a relatively straightforward, although arduous, process. Between the end of one inspection and the onset of another, the school would be expected to work on those areas identified by the inspectors. At the next inspection, the inspectors would look to see what progress had been made on the areas previously highlighted.

At RSSKL, however, working on our weaknesses was not a straightforward or easy process. There was a mix of cultural and organisational factors which made it very much an uphill struggle. No teacher enjoys Ofsted inspections but at RSSKL there was a strong sense among some teachers that the state and its quangocrats in Ofsted should have nothing whatsoever to do with what the school was offering. This attitude was encouraged by one or two experienced teachers who should have known better, who would say absurd things in College meetings such as: “We should just refuse to let Ofsted through the doors – what could they do to us anyway?” Well, the teachers who thought like that now know only too well what Ofsted could do to them.

I used to try to get College to understand what was at stake by saying things like: “If you run a car, there is a legal framework you operate within – you need to have car insurance, a road tax disc and a MoT certificate of roadworthiness. If you run a school, there is also a legal framework within which you have to operate – you need to be aware of issues such as pupil safeguarding; you need to have Ofsted inspections, which means that they will want to see your lesson plans, pupil assessments and sit in on your lessons. You cannot avoid this. In schools as in life, you need to render unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s and render unto God that which is God’s.” But too many teachers were not prepared to render unto Caesar that which the state required of them. Some of them seemed to have a problem with any kind of authority; I remember one upper school teacher devising a show for pupils to perform, which he called: “Ofsted – the musical.” The climactic moment of the piece was an Ofsted inspector being done to death with the copper rods from eurythmy lessons. All very amusing, no doubt, but utterly irresponsible and childish in people who had taken on a serious commitment to run the school as a collegiate.

As education facilitator, I was under a triple disadvantage: I was not a teacher; I had been appointed by trustees rather than College; I had no authority other than moral persuasion to compel staff to co-operate. I tried to explain to teachers that if the school decided to follow wholeheartedly the best practice recommendations of the SWSF Code of Practice, then we would not only be a really good Steiner school but we would also sail through future Ofsted inspections. I don’t think many of them heard me, or if they did, they usually felt there were more important priorities for them to discuss in their weekly teacher meetings.

I also had to spend a certain amount of my time defending and explaining the College of Teachers system to trustees and bending over backwards trying to make it work, because I believed that it does have the potential to offer some real advantages to a school and that, despite the problems, this was how a Steiner school should be organised. What I didn’t recognise sufficiently was that this should have been a two-way process requiring goodwill from the teachers and a willingness to work towards improvement. A few teachers had this but not the majority, who seemed to think that the way they had always done things was just fine.

Despite the many difficulties, I did make some progress – our next Ofsted inspection under SIS in 2011 rated us as “Good”. In hindsight, I should nevertheless have acknowledged to myself that the task was insuperable and recommended to the trustees that they should impose the appointment of a principal with a teaching background to run the school. This would have caused a huge ruckus at the time but it might have saved the school from subsequent closure. Perhaps even this would not have been enough; in my worst moments I felt that the only thing that would save the school would be to close it down, make all the teachers redundant and then re-open with a new structure, a new culture and new teacher contracts.

I have written elsewhere about my thoughts on a school trying to run itself via a College of Teachers but I can’t resist re-telling this anecdote: some years ago I held a vision-building workshop at RSSKL as part of our Inset Days. To help me, I invited a very experienced businessman and friend, Mick Crews, not only because of his track record in similar workshops for big companies but also because he liked what he had already heard of Steiner Waldorf schools. As part of our preparations, I explained to Mick the ways in which the school sought to manage itself through the College.   He listened very carefully and then he said: “It strikes me that, for your system to work, it requires a degree of personal integrity in the staff that you don’t find in any other walk of life”.

He was right, of course, and I’m sorry to say that I didn’t find that degree of personal integrity in the RSSKL College either. Some of the difficulties I came across were to do with the College’s failures to monitor teachers’ behaviour, to discipline members of staff or to handle complaints properly. There were one or two members of staff who in my view should not have been allowed to continue teaching. Everyone knew who they were, but it proved impossible to ease them out of the school. This was partly due to an endemic weakness of will and misplaced kindness but it was also partly down to what I call the “chumocracy” that ran the school. Teachers primarily thought of their colleagues as friends, which is admirable in one way but is not helpful in a school where professional standards must come before friendship.

Teachers must be prepared to report on their colleagues if they suspect anything less than ethical is taking place, and in really serious situations the College must support the disciplining, sacking and reporting of these colleagues to the local authority and the police, regardless of any feelings of friendship – because the needs and safety of the children must come first. I remember saying to College on one occasion that I had never felt so lonely as I did in my job as education facilitator. This was received with surprise and some indignation but it was how I felt. In that job, one could be friendly but not true friends with colleagues because there might come a time when, as once fell to me, it was necessary to suspend a teacher from the school, report his gross misconduct to the local authority and the police and then end his employment. This obviously had a huge impact on the man and his family, and was not calculated to make me popular with his friends in the school, who at first didn’t believe that he had done that of which he was accused.

There were other unpleasant things going on. A group of teachers and parents briefed by these teachers had come together in their opposition to the school’s property strategy, which was intended to improve the school’s buildings and facilities, including the Priory, which after Miss Cross’ death had eventually come into RSSKL’s ownership. This was a Grade II listed building which had been sorely neglected for many years to the point where English Heritage was sending us warning letters about the need to maintain it properly. Most of the school buildings were also in need of proper maintenance and no new buildings had been put up since the construction of the Gym in the early 1970s.

For reasons which I still don’t wholly understand, some teachers took against the property strategy, which they seemed to think was being imposed on them by trustees. RSSKL had used the Priory for teacher accommodation rather than for classrooms and there were several teachers and their families living there. Under the property strategy, which envisaged bringing the Priory back into use for teaching purposes, two or three families would have been asked to move elsewhere, but would have continued to enjoy the benefit of subsidised accommodation. All sorts of stories about this were told to parents, and then some of the parents began to circulate various documents and emails, alleging that there was something wrong with the administration of the school’s finances and that there was power-seeking and corruption in the trustees and the school management. When I reported on some of this to the whole school staff meeting, someone present secretly recorded my remarks and passed the recording to the cabal of parents. I subsequently received a threatening letter from one of these parents, a high-powered lawyer, delivered by motorcycle courier for maximum dramatic effect. There was much, much more going on but even today it is probably not prudent for me to give further details. The person who had leaked the recording was never discovered. Clearly, any basis of trust for collegial management of the school had broken down irretrievably. Suffice it to say that in this atmosphere of sabotage and betrayal, it was impossible for the school to function properly or to deal effectively with these attacks.

I urged the College to tell these parents that they must desist in their undermining activities or else they would be asked to remove their children from the school. This the College did not do, being by this time so weak and divided that it was incapable of effective action. I came to realise that there are some teachers and many parents who, like children, need to understand where the boundaries of acceptable behaviour lie. When adults don’t find any boundaries and keep pushing, still with no response, then just like children, it becomes deeply worrying for them and they cause even more disturbance. Through the agitation and deep unpleasantness towards some members of staff and trustees from some teachers and parents, the property strategy fell by the wayside and a really good opportunity for the school to upgrade and improve its whole estate for the benefit of the children and teachers alike was lost. With the closure of the school, those teachers who currently live in the Priory or elsewhere on school premises will soon be facing the loss of their homes. It could and should have been very different.

After I left the school in 2014, I cut all ties and made no attempt to stay in touch, sickened by my experiences there. I have not kept up with all the twists and turns of more recent events and have no comment to make on them. I know, however, that the College did not replace me despite some desultory attempts to do so; and the school then managed to fail six Ofsted inspections within 18 months.  Eventually the trustees appointed a principal (at around three times the average teacher salary) who specialised in turning around failing schools. Sadly, it was all too little, too late.

I looked online at the final Ofsted inspection report of 10^thMay 2018 that led to the school’s closure, which listed a catalogue of continuing failures. I noted the name of the second inspector on this occasion; it was the same person who had been lead inspector during my first traumatic experience of Ofsted, the woman who had been snubbed in the staff room by so many of the teachers.

What conclusions do I draw from this whole sorry story?

First of all and despite my own difficult experiences as a member of staff, I am very sad that a school which provided a good education to my own daughter and to so many other children over the last seventy years, has had to close because of the weakness, cowardice and malice of teachers and parents who were unable to see what the consequences of their own behaviour would be for the school. While I was experiencing these difficulties at the school, my daughter was gaining three A* grades at her A-level exams and going on to a successful university career. There were some really good teachers at the school, and the exam results were much better than the national average. The Waldorf curriculum taught alongside the exam curriculum at the school produced articulate, well-rounded and well-socialised young people who go on to do very well by society and in life. I want to celebrate what the school did well and remind myself that not all Steiner Waldorf schools should be damned because of RSSKL.

Second, in my view no Steiner school nowadays should attempt to run itself with a College of Teachers as its main management body. It is unrealistic to expect a school to be run satisfactorily by a body of teachers meeting once a week after a long day of teaching, even with a system of mandates running alongside it.  The College of Teachers is worse than useless as a school management body in today’s conditions, despite anything that Rudolf Steiner may have had to say in its favour nearly a century ago. I don’t think it even worked very well in Steiner’s own time, when despite recruiting leading talents from across Europe to become the first teachers in the Stuttgart Waldorf School, the school experienced all sorts of problems and never managed to come to a definitive form and role for its College – and throughout it all, Steiner still found it necessary to act as the de facto headmaster. Where the College is still worthwhile is in areas such as pedagogical discussions, child study and the sharing of research; and where the College includes administration staff as well, it can help to establish a sense that the school is the responsibility of everyone, and all staff whatever their job titles, are educators. This sense of common purpose was never achieved at RSSKL. To run a truly complex organisation like a school in today’s regulatory environment, I think it is necessary for a principal and senior management team to work alongside the College to achieve the best results.

What of the role of Ofsted in all this? I have no means of knowing for sure but I strongly suspect that there was some kind of turf war going on between “official” Ofsted and the former HMIs of SIS Ltd.  Long after I had left the school, when parents began writing to Ofsted to complain about the way the school had handled their safeguarding concerns in connection with a teacher (as they were fully entitled to do), it seems likely that Ofsted saw it as an opportunity to step in and over-ride the inspectors from SIS, who would have been perfectly capable of dealing with the matter. But given everything that was happening at the school, it was inevitable that Ofsted would at some point have to pull the plug. I recently met a parent and former trustee of RSSKL, who said: “Thank God for Ofsted – and I never thought I would find myself saying that.” This was of course before the school was forced to close.

A major weakness of the Steiner schools in the UK is the fact that the exceptional autonomy of each Steiner school makes coordinated responses to movement-wide problems very difficult. This lack of centralised authority also makes it almost impossible to fix problems that individual schools have been unable to solve for themselves. RSSKL has now tarnished the name of Steiner Waldorf education far and wide – the BBC and national and local newspapers have carried extensive reports of the problems, leading figures in education have been quoted as saying that this should be a wake-up call for government to intervene, and of course the whole fiasco has been a gift to online Waldorf critics.  One looks in vain to Dornach, the Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, or the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (now somewhat reduced in staffing and resources) for a response.

Yet a response and positive corrective actions are surely needed. There are, for example, real deficiencies in some of the Steiner Waldorf teacher training courses. If I were recruiting teachers for a Steiner school now, I would do my best to employ only people who already had acquired QTS (qualified teacher status) and who had then decided to convert to the Steiner Waldorf system. That way a school would have some chance of getting gifted teachers who are also familiar with lesson planning, pupil assessment, record-keeping, classroom discipline etc., and all those issues on which RSSKL was judged to be failing.

I’m concerned that, because they have not sufficiently evolved and developed their administration, professional practice or the curriculum, the independent fee-paying Steiner schools are slowly declining. In recent years schools in Aberdeen, Canterbury, Glasgow and now Kings Langley have closed. It is possible that more will follow. There are of course also some excellent independent Steiner schools such as Edinburgh, Elmfield, Michael Hall, Wynstones and others; but my main hope for the future of Steiner Waldorf education in the UK now resides with the publicly-funded Steiner academy schools at Hereford, Exeter, Frome and Bristol. It is ironic that SWSF was criticised by many in the independent schools for supporting Steiner academies, on the grounds that public funding was likely to lead to government interference with the Waldorf curriculum, or that free Steiner schools would threaten the existence of the fee-paying schools. What these people forgot is that the government can and will intervene at any school, whatever its status, which is perceived as failing. Because the Steiner academy schools receive public funding, they are held much more accountable by government – but because they are now part of the maintained sector, they are seen as a valid part of the pluralistic education system in England in a way that the independent schools never managed to achieve. Not the least of RSSKL’s disasters is that it makes it far less likely that any government will wish to allow any more publicly-funded Steiner academy schools to be created.

My final conclusion is that to hold today to the letter of what Steiner did, rather than seek to express the essence of what he was really about, is to doom your school to irrelevance. I recently found a quotation from Karl König, founder of the Camphill Movement, which put this rather well: “Tradition is nurturing the flame, not worshipping the ashes.”

Source: https://anthropopper.com/2018/07/29/death-of-a-steiner-school/

Two Steiner state schools in the west of England face possible closure or takeover after the Department for Education said it intended to cut off their funding later this year.

The trusts running the free schools in Bristol and Frome have been issued termination warning notices by the DfE after the schools were rated as inadequate and placed in special measures by Ofsted.

The inspections published in January reported a long list of serious safeguarding and teaching problems at the two schools, which subscribe to aspects of the unconventional educational philosophy created by Rudolf Steiner in the early 20th century.

“I am now issuing this termination warning notice because I do not have confidence that the trust is able to rapidly and sustainably improve the academy’s systems of governance and management and educational standards,” Lisa Mannall, the DfE’s regional schools commissioner for the south-west of England, said in the letters.

“I am therefore minded to terminate the funding agreement of the academy and transfer the school to a strong multi-academy trust that can provide the capacity for continued improvement.”

The letters are the latest step in a formal legal process that could result in the Steiner Academy Bristol and the Steiner Academy Frome being closed unless new sponsors can be found to step in and take them over.

Mannall’s letters told the schools that their safeguarding was not effective, with pupils “exposed to avoidable risk of harm”, including unnecessary physical intervention by staff. The Bristol school was told that bullying was “too frequent” and leaders had been too slow to take action.

“Governors have not held senior leaders to account effectively over time. As a result, teaching is weak and pupils are underachieving significantly across the school,” Mannell added.

Joss Hayes, the headteacher of the Steiner Academy Bristol, said: “External partners have already confirmed that safeguarding is effective at the school. We are committed to making improvements and have started implementing a number of new learning programmes.”

Three of the four Steiner state schools that have opened since 2011 have been rated as inadequate, including Bristol, Frome and a third school in Exeter. The Exeter Steiner Academy was sent a termination warning notice by the DfE last month.

The fourth school, in Hereford, was rated good by Ofsted and posted an encouraging performance in last summer’s GCSE exams.

The trusts in Bristol and Frome have until 20 February to persuade the DfE they have made significant improvements.

Roy Douglas, a governor at the Bristol school, said: “Our parents remains unfailingly supportive of our school and its ethos. We intend to challenge the Ofsted judgement in the courts.”

The governors have begun crowdfunding to pay for legal action, and said they had raised £17,000.

After the Ofsted inspections were published, the education secretary, Damian Hinds, said: “Safeguarding our children and young people throughout their education is paramount, regardless of the setting in which they are being taught.”

Campaigners including Humanists UK have called for the schools to be closed, alleging that the Steiner ethos promotes pseudoscience and homeopathy, including cases of hostility towards vaccinations.

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/feb/13/two-state-steiner-schools-face-possible-closure-or-takeover

I refer to England, rather than the rest of the UK, because it is the Department for Education (DfE) in England that oversees Ofsted which is responsible for inspecting a range of educational institutions, including state schools and some independent schools within England, and which is currently concentrating its efforts on giving Steiner schools as hard a time as possible. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the situation is different and the Ofsted equivalents in those countries do not appear to have it as their mission to close down Steiner schools.

It was of course the disastrous failings at the now-closed Kings Langley school that provided the main impetus for this campaign against Steiner schools. As Tom Hart Shea, a former head teacher who commented on my “Death of a Steiner school” post observed, “I fear the knock-on effects of this saga for other Steiner Schools. By this I mean it would be irresponsible for the DfE not to look for similar failings in other College-run Steiner Schools”.

So it has proved, except that Ofsted is not just inspecting the independent Steiner schools to within an inch of their lives but is also coming down very heavily on the state-funded Steiner academy schools.

The Kings Langley failures led to a wide range of highly critical articles about Steiner education in the national media. On 24^th June 2018, the Daily Telegraph published an article with the headline: “ ‘Rotten to the core’ flagship Steiner school to close, as it emerges concerned parents were sent gagging letters”. The article, by the newspaper’s education editor, Camilla Turner, went on to say:

“A flagship Steiner school is to close amid fears over child safety, after it emerged that parents who tried to raise the alarm about safeguarding lapses had been sent gagging letters.

The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley (RSSKL) has told parents that it will shut down at the end of this term, following a string of damning Ofsted reports.

Steiner schools, which are favoured by liberally-minded middle-class parents, base their curriculum – which emphasises creativity and imagination – on the spiritual philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.

Parents have accused the school of attempting to “cover up” the full extent of its failings by trying to intimidate those who sought to voice their unease about the goings-on at the school”.

Camilla Turner returned to the theme in another Telegraph article on 20^th October 2018, this time with the Steiner Academy Exeter in her sights:

“Ministers have been urged to order fresh inspections of all the Steiner schools in the country, as a second school is threatened with closure amid ‘serious’ concerns about child safety.

The Steiner Academy Exeter was warned by the government this week that it could have its funding cut off, after Ofsted discovered severe safeguarding and governance lapses.

Following the inspection, the regional schools’ commissioner took the unusual step of instructing it to close immediately while the issues were addressed, so it can ensure a ‘safe environment’ for its pupils. It re-opened a week later”.

On 6^thDecember 2018, Sally Weale, an education correspondent for The Guardian, also wrote about the Steiner Academy Exeter under the headline:

“ ‘Inadequate’ Steiner school to be taken over by academy chain”.  She went on to report:

“A state-funded Steiner school in Devon is to be transferred to a multi-academy trust after the schools watchdog said it was inadequate.

Ofsted inspectors raised serious concerns about safeguarding and lack of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) at the Steiner Academy Exeter, which opened in September 2013.

The academy is one of a small number of Steiner schools set up as a result of the government’s controversial free school policy and paid for by public funds. Other Steiner schools in the UK are privately funded”.

Sally Weale followed this up with another Guardian article on 17^th January 2019:

“The future of state-funded Steiner education has been thrown into doubt after a series of snap Ofsted inspections found that three of the four such schools set up under the Conservatives’ free schools programme were inadequate.

The four have been inspected in recent weeks – alongside private Steiner schools, a number of which have also been found to be inadequate – following an intervention by the education secretary, Damian Hinds, over concerns about safeguarding.

Ofsted reports for the Frome and Bristol Steiner academies are due to be published later this week and have been shared with parents. Copies seen by The Guardian reveal inspectors’ concerns about a wide range of issues including safeguarding, bullying and lack of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The Frome report accuses leaders and governors of failing to provide pupils with a safe and effective education, due to a lack of understanding about the current statutory requirements”.

Humanists UK, which has for some years been campaigning against Steiner schools, tried to claim the credit for Ofsted’s actions:

“Humanists UK is calling for the urgent closure of three Steiner schools which were rated inadequate by the education inspectorate Ofsted after the schools failed to prove they could keep pupils safe. The inspections are the culmination of a long-running campaign by Humanists UK to expose the dangers of the Steiner school sector. (…)

Humanists UK has long standing concerns about Steiner schools and has consistently campaigned against state funding for these institutions. In 2014 it won an Information Tribunal case against the government, forcing it to publicly release briefings about serious problems with Steiner schools including the bullying of students and teaching racism.

Other concerns raised by Humanists UK included the presence of pseudoscience on the curriculum (including scepticism of evolution and vaccinations and support for homeopathy), homeopathy being given to pupils by the schools’ ‘anthroposophical doctors’, and the fact that a number of private and at least one state Steiner school have opted out of providing vaccinations.

 The Guardian also reports that the School Inspection Service (SIS), which Humanists UK has long campaigned to see shut down on the basis of concerns about its efficacy, has now been closed. Ofsted has hitherto not inspected Steiner schools routinely as that has been the SIS’s responsibility. The SIS was set up by the Exclusive Brethren and also inspects Brethren schools, and Humanists UK had concerns about the quality and impartiality of its inspections. Humanists UK is seeking to clarify its reported closure with Ofsted”.

It is ironic, to say the least, that Humanists UK have been so keen to close down schools offering a thoroughly humanistic (though not atheistic) education. But their last point about the closure of the School Inspection Service (SIS) appears to be true, although I can find no mention of it on the SIS website.  I am sad about this closure, because as I wrote in my Death of a Steiner school post, the ex-HMIs (Her Majesty’s Inspectors) of SIS were the best inspectors I have come across. They were headed up by Jane Cooper, who was formerly a highly respected Principal Inspector for Ofsted. SIS also inspected the Cognita Schools group, which was set up by the late Chris Woodhead, himself a former Chief Inspector of Ofsted. So I think we can be quite certain that SIS really knew their business. As I suspected, it seems likely that they have become the victims of a turf war with Ofsted.

The Guardian returned to the attack on 18^th January with an article by their columnist Zoe Williams, headed: “These Steiner ‘failures’ are really a failure of the free school agenda”.  Ms Williams had spotted an opportunity to have a go at the former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, who had been responsible for a huge expansion of the government’s free schools programme, under which four publicly-funded Steiner academies had been created:

“Ofsted inspectors have found three of the UK’s four Steiner state schools “inadequate”, in reports that will be published this week. Their core concerns are believed to be safeguarding, bullying and a lack of support for children with special educational needs. A number of private Steiner schools have also been deemed inadequate.

In a brilliant primer written in 2014, when free schools were still a jewel in the crown of the coalition government, the BBC journalist Chris Cook described the core controversies that might be thrown up by Steiner schools. At that point, and to this day, these are mainly private schools. In a way, the handful that opened on the state’s dollar were the apotheosis of Michael Gove’s promise to parents: if you want to replicate a private education, even at its very wackiest, and you have the energy, you have our blessing.

The headline contention was the very pronounced racism of Rudolf Steiner, who thought black people lived an “instinctual life”, and white people an “intellectual life”. Somehow, though, this was passed over rather mildly as an unfortunate tang of times past, nothing to do with his educational writing, according to the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) – just as a pro-choice campaigner today might shrug off the hardcore eugenicism of Marie Stopes.

Yet the two are not analogous, since Steiner’s white supremacism is a thread running through the rest of the creed, a mulch of reincarnation and homeopathy. One piquant detail of the BBC’s investigation was that four white teachers at a private school, on a diversity training day, when asked their ethnicity, “ticked every box” on the basis that they had only ended up white having passed through every inferior race in their reincarnation journey”.

Ah yes, racism and white supremacism. It is impossible to have any kind of public discussion about Steiner Waldorf education without these accusations being thrown at the schools, however much the schools may emphasise that they do not agree with Steiner’s racial theories. Here, for example, is a statement from the website of the Steiner Academy Hereford:

“Steiner Education is opposed to all forms of discrimination against any person or group of people on the grounds of race, gender, faith, disability, age and sexual orientation and is committed to promoting equality of opportunity and reflecting the diversity of the children, staff and parents served by Steiner schools.  The following is taken from Steiner’s book, “The Universal Human”.

‘ … the anthroposophical movement [ . . .], must cast aside the division into races. It must seek to unite people of all races and nations, and to bridge the divisions and differences between various groups of people. The old point of view of race has a physical character, but what will prevail in the future will have a more spiritual character.’

Nevertheless, even though Steiner’s ideas are based on a profound respect for the equality, individuality and shared humanity of all people, regardless of race or ethnic origin, his works do contain a number of statements on race that are inappropriate in a modern context.

Steiner education thrives on every continent, in every culture and within a wide range of ethnic contexts. For example, during the period of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the only school catering for mixed races was a Steiner Waldorf school and today there are schools following Steiner’s indications on education in diverse cultures and communities, including: Israel, Egypt, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil or Hawaii, over 60 countries in all”.

Schools can say this sort of thing until they are blue in the face but it will make no difference to the critics, who have found the accusations of racism provide an excellent stick with which to beat the schools out of existence.

Zoe Williams’ article produced a backlash from parents and supporters of Steiner schools in The Guardian’s Schools’ section letters page, including this rather clumsy defence from a governor of the Steiner Academy Bristol:

“I am dismayed by Zoe Williams’ caricature of Steiner education and her willingness to cite state-funded Steiner schools as an argument against free schools. Her description is based entirely on a piece written by Chris Cook in 2014, who conceded he had not looked at state-funded Steiner academies. He concentrated on the esoteric spiritual science of anthroposophy. But this has no place in the Steiner Academy Bristol. We teach all major world religions (certainly not anthroposophy!).

As for Steiner’s ugly racism, we completely dissociate ourselves from such attitudes. Ours is a multi-ethnic, multi-religion school with a sharply focused curriculum that seeks to develop the head, the heart and the soul in a rounded way. Where we do think Steiner was right was in recognising the need for age-appropriate learning that develops the whole child”.

One conclusion I drew in my Death of a Steiner school post appears to have been wrong. When I said that “my main hope for the future of Steiner Waldorf education in the UK now resides with the publicly-funded Steiner academy schools at Hereford, Exeter, Frome and Bristol”, I was reckoning without the zeal of Ofsted’s witchfinders. I said that “because the Steiner academy schools receive public funding, they are held much more accountable by government – but because they are now part of the maintained sector, they are seen as a valid part of the pluralistic education system in England in a way that the independent schools never managed to achieve. Not the least of RSSKL’s disasters is that it makes it far less likely that any government will wish to allow any more publicly-funded Steiner academy schools to be created”.

Well, that last sentence is certainly correct. But I had not expected that three out of the four publicly-funded Steiner academy schools would have received such bad Ofsted reports. The Steiner Academy Exeter was forced to close for a week and has now been taken over by a multi-academy trust (MAT) and the principal, the highly respected Alan Swindell, has left the school and twelve trustees have resigned. This is very likely to mean that Steiner Waldorf education in Exeter will now be in name only. The Steiner Academy Frome, after previous ‘Good’ verdicts from Ofsted, has now been rated ‘Inadequate’ in every single area of inspection and the principal, the excellent Trevor Mepham, has left the school. The Steiner Academy Bristol has also received a damning Ofsted report, which has provoked the school into planning to take Ofsted to court after it was, like Frome, rated as ‘Inadequate’ under each area of inspection and consequently was put into ‘special measures’.

A similar reign of terror is being visited on the independent Steiner schools, with several which had previously been rated as ‘Good’ or even ‘Outstanding’, hurriedly being inspected and told that they are ‘Inadequate’.

What is going on?  I suspect that something like the following has happened: a celebrity parent at Kings Langley wrote to the DfE, along with about 30 other parents, to complain about the school’s inadequate handling of their complaints about safeguarding. The celebrity parent’s letter will have been put onto the desk of the Education Minister, Damian Hinds, together with a dossier of hostile press cuttings about Steiner Waldorf education. Hinds will have said to his permanent secretary: “Get Spielman on the line (Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector) and tell her to put some stick about with these weird Steiner bastards. Make sure she closes down a few of their schools pour encourager les autres. And make sure I don’t get any more letters like this on my desk.”

Now some people may say: What is the problem here? All the schools need to do is to adhere to Ofsted guidelines, particularly on safeguarding, and they will be passed as ‘Good’ or even ‘Outstanding’. Schools need to be more professional in their approach and they need to get this right.

What this ignores, however, is the probability that the schools are now being faced with a highly politicised war of attrition in which the government is determined to close down some Steiner schools so as to avoid embarrassing headlines in the future. In the past, when schools were under the control of local education authorities, Secretaries of State for Education could blame the town halls and civic centres for any lapses in school standards. As Zoe Williams has noticed, the free schools programme means that the responsibility for school failures now ends up on the desk of the Minister.

And now there’s a truly chilling development from Ofsted: Steiner Waldorf education is now to be accused of thought crimes. Amanda Spielman was reported in Schools Week as having written to Damian Hinds, the education secretary, on Thursday after snap inspections of nine Steiner schools – state and private – found six were “inadequate” and three “requires improvement”. Spielman wrote that senior leaders at one school “blamed pupils with SEND for all the problems”, while others witnessed “inappropriate physical handling” of pupils. Some parents who complained were “intimidated”. Spielman has now demanded an investigation into whether the Steiner philosophy is contributing to the failures.

Apart from the aftermath of the Kings Langley closure, why are Steiner schools in such a pickle at the moment? These days I’m pretty much removed from the whole business, since I left Kings Langley in 2014, but my feeling is that the Steiner schools’ movement in the UK, because of its historical allegiance to schools self-administering through a College of Teachers, has not been able to develop a cadre of school leaders able to cope with the latter-day demands of Ofsted and particularly the Safeguarding aspect of school regulation. How many of them will come through this period unscathed I can’t say – but I’m glad my own daughter was able to have a Steiner education, at a time when History of Art was still available as an A-level (Gove removed this as a subject). It has stood her very well in her subsequent university and career path and I hope that, despite the current Ofsted reign of terror, other children will also be able to benefit from Steiner Waldorf education for many years to come.

Critics who laud Ofsted for moving against Steiner schools should be careful of what they wish for. The main beneficiaries of this confected angst about Steiner schools and safeguarding are the manufacturers and sellers of 6’ high perimeter fencing materials, in which schools are forced by Ofsted to turn their schools into fortresses against the world. What children learn from this is that the world is a dangerous place and adults are scary people, not to be trusted. It also leads to the absurd and offensive situation in which kindergarten parents wanting to collect their child from school have to sign in at the school office, wear a lanyard, be escorted across the grounds by a member of staff to the kindergarten and then be escorted back to the school office where they have to sign out and return their lanyard. If that’s the kind of school that Humanists UK are agitating for, then all I can say is that it’s not my idea of a humane or humanist education.

As I’m an unashamed and unabashed anthroposophist, and despite any embarrassment this might cause to school governors wishing to repudiate everything about Steiner except his educational teachings, I will finish with a quotation from Rudolf Steiner which I commend to all Steiner school teachers who are seeing their best efforts crumbling to dust at the moment:

“However good the right may be that you want to bring to realisation – it will turn into a wrong in the course of time. Benevolence will after a time become prejudicial behaviour. And however good the right may be that you want to bring to realisation — it will turn into a wrong in the course of time. The reality is that there are no absolutes in this world. You work towards something that is good, and the way of the world will turn it into something bad. We therefore must seek ever new ways, look for new forms over and over again. This is what really matters.

The swing of the pendulum governs all such human efforts. Nothing is more harmful than belief in absolute ideals, for they are at odds with the true course of world evolution.  (…)

It is (Ahriman) who will and must be the bearer of our future civilisation. This is a harsh truth, but it is important. It is intimately bound up with the fact that destructive powers will have to enter into the future progress of civilisation. Above all — (…) — destructive powers will have to enter into the whole field of education, and especially the education of children, unless the matter is taken in hand with wisdom. Because of the general trend of civilisation, and the customary practices and emotions of people, destructive powers will also enter more and more into the whole social sphere. They will above all bring more and more destruction into the actual relationships between people”.

Source: https://anthropopper.com/2019/02/05/difficult-days-for-steiner-waldorf-schools-in-england/

I refer to England, rather than the rest of the UK, because it is the Department for Education (DfE) in England that oversees Ofsted which is responsible for inspecting a range of educational institutions, including state schools and some independent schools within England, and which is currently concentrating its efforts on giving Steiner schools as hard a time as possible. In Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland the situation is different and the Ofsted equivalents in those countries do not appear to have it as their mission to close down Steiner schools.

It was of course the disastrous failings at the now-closed Kings Langley school that provided the main impetus for this campaign against Steiner schools. As Tom Hart Shea, a former head teacher who commented on my “Death of a Steiner school” post observed, “I fear the knock-on effects of this saga for other Steiner Schools. By this I mean it would be irresponsible for the DfE not to look for similar failings in other College-run Steiner Schools”.

So it has proved, except that Ofsted is not just inspecting the independent Steiner schools to within an inch of their lives but is also coming down very heavily on the state-funded Steiner academy schools.

The Kings Langley failures led to a wide range of highly critical articles about Steiner education in the national media. On 24^th June 2018, the Daily Telegraph published an article with the headline: “ ‘Rotten to the core’ flagship Steiner school to close, as it emerges concerned parents were sent gagging letters”. The article, by the newspaper’s education editor, Camilla Turner, went on to say:

“A flagship Steiner school is to close amid fears over child safety, after it emerged that parents who tried to raise the alarm about safeguarding lapses had been sent gagging letters.

The Rudolf Steiner School Kings Langley (RSSKL) has told parents that it will shut down at the end of this term, following a string of damning Ofsted reports.

Steiner schools, which are favoured by liberally-minded middle-class parents, base their curriculum – which emphasises creativity and imagination – on the spiritual philosophy of Rudolf Steiner.

Parents have accused the school of attempting to “cover up” the full extent of its failings by trying to intimidate those who sought to voice their unease about the goings-on at the school”.

Camilla Turner returned to the theme in another Telegraph article on 20^th October 2018, this time with the Steiner Academy Exeter in her sights:

“Ministers have been urged to order fresh inspections of all the Steiner schools in the country, as a second school is threatened with closure amid ‘serious’ concerns about child safety.

The Steiner Academy Exeter was warned by the government this week that it could have its funding cut off, after Ofsted discovered severe safeguarding and governance lapses.

Following the inspection, the regional schools’ commissioner took the unusual step of instructing it to close immediately while the issues were addressed, so it can ensure a ‘safe environment’ for its pupils. It re-opened a week later”.

On 6^thDecember 2018, Sally Weale, an education correspondent for The Guardian, also wrote about the Steiner Academy Exeter under the headline:

“ ‘Inadequate’ Steiner school to be taken over by academy chain”.  She went on to report:

“A state-funded Steiner school in Devon is to be transferred to a multi-academy trust after the schools watchdog said it was inadequate.

Ofsted inspectors raised serious concerns about safeguarding and lack of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities (Send) at the Steiner Academy Exeter, which opened in September 2013.

The academy is one of a small number of Steiner schools set up as a result of the government’s controversial free school policy and paid for by public funds. Other Steiner schools in the UK are privately funded”.

Sally Weale followed this up with another Guardian article on 17^th January 2019:

“The future of state-funded Steiner education has been thrown into doubt after a series of snap Ofsted inspections found that three of the four such schools set up under the Conservatives’ free schools programme were inadequate.

The four have been inspected in recent weeks – alongside private Steiner schools, a number of which have also been found to be inadequate – following an intervention by the education secretary, Damian Hinds, over concerns about safeguarding.

Ofsted reports for the Frome and Bristol Steiner academies are due to be published later this week and have been shared with parents. Copies seen by The Guardian reveal inspectors’ concerns about a wide range of issues including safeguarding, bullying and lack of support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.

The Frome report accuses leaders and governors of failing to provide pupils with a safe and effective education, due to a lack of understanding about the current statutory requirements”.

Humanists UK, which has for some years been campaigning against Steiner schools, tried to claim the credit for Ofsted’s actions:

“Humanists UK is calling for the urgent closure of three Steiner schools which were rated inadequate by the education inspectorate Ofsted after the schools failed to prove they could keep pupils safe. The inspections are the culmination of a long-running campaign by Humanists UK to expose the dangers of the Steiner school sector. (…)

Humanists UK has long standing concerns about Steiner schools and has consistently campaigned against state funding for these institutions. In 2014 it won an Information Tribunal case against the government, forcing it to publicly release briefings about serious problems with Steiner schools including the bullying of students and teaching racism.

Other concerns raised by Humanists UK included the presence of pseudoscience on the curriculum (including scepticism of evolution and vaccinations and support for homeopathy), homeopathy being given to pupils by the schools’ ‘anthroposophical doctors’, and the fact that a number of private and at least one state Steiner school have opted out of providing vaccinations.

 The Guardian also reports that the School Inspection Service (SIS), which Humanists UK has long campaigned to see shut down on the basis of concerns about its efficacy, has now been closed. Ofsted has hitherto not inspected Steiner schools routinely as that has been the SIS’s responsibility. The SIS was set up by the Exclusive Brethren and also inspects Brethren schools, and Humanists UK had concerns about the quality and impartiality of its inspections. Humanists UK is seeking to clarify its reported closure with Ofsted”.

It is ironic, to say the least, that Humanists UK have been so keen to close down schools offering a thoroughly humanistic (though not atheistic) education. But their last point about the closure of the School Inspection Service (SIS) appears to be true, although I can find no mention of it on the SIS website.  I am sad about this closure, because as I wrote in my Death of a Steiner school post, the ex-HMIs (Her Majesty’s Inspectors) of SIS were the best inspectors I have come across. They were headed up by Jane Cooper, who was formerly a highly respected Principal Inspector for Ofsted. SIS also inspected the Cognita Schools group, which was set up by the late Chris Woodhead, himself a former Chief Inspector of Ofsted. So I think we can be quite certain that SIS really knew their business. As I suspected, it seems likely that they have become the victims of a turf war with Ofsted.

The Guardian returned to the attack on 18^th January with an article by their columnist Zoe Williams, headed: “These Steiner ‘failures’ are really a failure of the free school agenda”.  Ms Williams had spotted an opportunity to have a go at the former Education Secretary, Michael Gove, who had been responsible for a huge expansion of the government’s free schools programme, under which four publicly-funded Steiner academies had been created:

“Ofsted inspectors have found three of the UK’s four Steiner state schools “inadequate”, in reports that will be published this week. Their core concerns are believed to be safeguarding, bullying and a lack of support for children with special educational needs. A number of private Steiner schools have also been deemed inadequate.

In a brilliant primer written in 2014, when free schools were still a jewel in the crown of the coalition government, the BBC journalist Chris Cook described the core controversies that might be thrown up by Steiner schools. At that point, and to this day, these are mainly private schools. In a way, the handful that opened on the state’s dollar were the apotheosis of Michael Gove’s promise to parents: if you want to replicate a private education, even at its very wackiest, and you have the energy, you have our blessing.

The headline contention was the very pronounced racism of Rudolf Steiner, who thought black people lived an “instinctual life”, and white people an “intellectual life”. Somehow, though, this was passed over rather mildly as an unfortunate tang of times past, nothing to do with his educational writing, according to the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) – just as a pro-choice campaigner today might shrug off the hardcore eugenicism of Marie Stopes.

Yet the two are not analogous, since Steiner’s white supremacism is a thread running through the rest of the creed, a mulch of reincarnation and homeopathy. One piquant detail of the BBC’s investigation was that four white teachers at a private school, on a diversity training day, when asked their ethnicity, “ticked every box” on the basis that they had only ended up white having passed through every inferior race in their reincarnation journey”.

Ah yes, racism and white supremacism. It is impossible to have any kind of public discussion about Steiner Waldorf education without these accusations being thrown at the schools, however much the schools may emphasise that they do not agree with Steiner’s racial theories. Here, for example, is a statement from the website of the Steiner Academy Hereford:

“Steiner Education is opposed to all forms of discrimination against any person or group of people on the grounds of race, gender, faith, disability, age and sexual orientation and is committed to promoting equality of opportunity and reflecting the diversity of the children, staff and parents served by Steiner schools.  The following is taken from Steiner’s book, “The Universal Human”.

‘ … the anthroposophical movement [ . . .], must cast aside the division into races. It must seek to unite people of all races and nations, and to bridge the divisions and differences between various groups of people. The old point of view of race has a physical character, but what will prevail in the future will have a more spiritual character.’

Nevertheless, even though Steiner’s ideas are based on a profound respect for the equality, individuality and shared humanity of all people, regardless of race or ethnic origin, his works do contain a number of statements on race that are inappropriate in a modern context.

Steiner education thrives on every continent, in every culture and within a wide range of ethnic contexts. For example, during the period of the apartheid regime in South Africa, the only school catering for mixed races was a Steiner Waldorf school and today there are schools following Steiner’s indications on education in diverse cultures and communities, including: Israel, Egypt, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Taiwan, Japan, Brazil or Hawaii, over 60 countries in all”.

Schools can say this sort of thing until they are blue in the face but it will make no difference to the critics, who have found the accusations of racism provide an excellent stick with which to beat the schools out of existence.

Zoe Williams’ article produced a backlash from parents and supporters of Steiner schools in The Guardian’s Schools’ section letters page, including this rather clumsy defence from a governor of the Steiner Academy Bristol:

“I am dismayed by Zoe Williams’ caricature of Steiner education and her willingness to cite state-funded Steiner schools as an argument against free schools. Her description is based entirely on a piece written by Chris Cook in 2014, who conceded he had not looked at state-funded Steiner academies. He concentrated on the esoteric spiritual science of anthroposophy. But this has no place in the Steiner Academy Bristol. We teach all major world religions (certainly not anthroposophy!).

As for Steiner’s ugly racism, we completely dissociate ourselves from such attitudes. Ours is a multi-ethnic, multi-religion school with a sharply focused curriculum that seeks to develop the head, the heart and the soul in a rounded way. Where we do think Steiner was right was in recognising the need for age-appropriate learning that develops the whole child”.

One conclusion I drew in my Death of a Steiner school post appears to have been wrong. When I said that “my main hope for the future of Steiner Waldorf education in the UK now resides with the publicly-funded Steiner academy schools at Hereford, Exeter, Frome and Bristol”, I was reckoning without the zeal of Ofsted’s witchfinders. I said that “because the Steiner academy schools receive public funding, they are held much more accountable by government – but because they are now part of the maintained sector, they are seen as a valid part of the pluralistic education system in England in a way that the independent schools never managed to achieve. Not the least of RSSKL’s disasters is that it makes it far less likely that any government will wish to allow any more publicly-funded Steiner academy schools to be created”.

Well, that last sentence is certainly correct. But I had not expected that three out of the four publicly-funded Steiner academy schools would have received such bad Ofsted reports. The Steiner Academy Exeter was forced to close for a week and has now been taken over by a multi-academy trust (MAT) and the principal, the highly respected Alan Swindell, has left the school and twelve trustees have resigned. This is very likely to mean that Steiner Waldorf education in Exeter will now be in name only. The Steiner Academy Frome, after previous ‘Good’ verdicts from Ofsted, has now been rated ‘Inadequate’ in every single area of inspection and the principal, the excellent Trevor Mepham, has left the school. The Steiner Academy Bristol has also received a damning Ofsted report, which has provoked the school into planning to take Ofsted to court after it was, like Frome, rated as ‘Inadequate’ under each area of inspection and consequently was put into ‘special measures’.

A similar reign of terror is being visited on the independent Steiner schools, with several which had previously been rated as ‘Good’ or even ‘Outstanding’, hurriedly being inspected and told that they are ‘Inadequate’.

What is going on?  I suspect that something like the following has happened: a celebrity parent at Kings Langley wrote to the DfE, along with about 30 other parents, to complain about the school’s inadequate handling of their complaints about safeguarding. The celebrity parent’s letter will have been put onto the desk of the Education Minister, Damian Hinds, together with a dossier of hostile press cuttings about Steiner Waldorf education. Hinds will have said to his permanent secretary: “Get Spielman on the line (Amanda Spielman, Ofsted’s chief inspector) and tell her to put some stick about with these weird Steiner bastards. Make sure she closes down a few of their schools pour encourager les autres. And make sure I don’t get any more letters like this on my desk.”

Now some people may say: What is the problem here? All the schools need to do is to adhere to Ofsted guidelines, particularly on safeguarding, and they will be passed as ‘Good’ or even ‘Outstanding’. Schools need to be more professional in their approach and they need to get this right.

What this ignores, however, is the probability that the schools are now being faced with a highly politicized war of attrition in which the government is determined to close down some Steiner schools so as to avoid embarrassing headlines in the future. In the past, when schools were under the control of local education authorities, Secretaries of State for Education could blame the town halls and civic centers for any lapses in school standards. As Zoe Williams has noticed, the free schools program means that the responsibility for school failures now ends up on the desk of the Minister.

And now there’s a truly chilling development from Ofsted: Steiner Waldorf education is now to be accused of thought crimes. Amanda Spielman was reported in Schools Week as having written to Damian Hinds, the education secretary, on Thursday after snap inspections of nine Steiner schools – state and private – found six were “inadequate” and three “requires improvement”. Spielman wrote that senior leaders at one school “blamed pupils with SEND for all the problems”, while others witnessed “inappropriate physical handling” of pupils. Some parents who complained were “intimidated”. Spielman has now demanded an investigation into whether the Steiner philosophy is contributing to the failures.

Apart from the aftermath of the Kings Langley closure, why are Steiner schools in such a pickle at the moment? These days I’m pretty much removed from the whole business, since I left Kings Langley in 2014, but my feeling is that the Steiner schools’ movement in the UK, because of its historical allegiance to schools self-administering through a College of Teachers, has not been able to develop a cadre of school leaders able to cope with the latter-day demands of Ofsted and particularly the Safeguarding aspect of school regulation. How many of them will come through this period unscathed I can’t say – but I’m glad my own daughter was able to have a Steiner education, at a time when History of Art was still available as an A-level (Gove removed this as a subject). It has stood her very well in her subsequent university and career path and I hope that, despite the current Ofsted reign of terror, other children will also be able to benefit from Steiner Waldorf education for many years to come.

Critics who laud Ofsted for moving against Steiner schools should be careful of what they wish for. The main beneficiaries of this confected angst about Steiner schools and safeguarding are the manufacturers and sellers of 6’ high perimeter fencing materials, in which schools are forced by Ofsted to turn their schools into fortresses against the world. What children learn from this is that the world is a dangerous place and adults are scary people, not to be trusted. It also leads to the absurd and offensive situation in which kindergarten parents wanting to collect their child from school have to sign in at the school office, wear a lanyard, be escorted across the grounds by a member of staff to the kindergarten and then be escorted back to the school office where they have to sign out and return their lanyard. If that’s the kind of school that Humanists UK are agitating for, then all I can say is that it’s not my idea of a humane or humanist education.

As I’m an unashamed and unabashed anthroposophist, and despite any embarrassment this might cause to school governors wishing to repudiate everything about Steiner except his educational teachings, I will finish with a quotation from Rudolf Steiner which I commend to all Steiner school teachers who are seeing their best efforts crumbling to dust at the moment:

“However good the right may be that you want to bring to realization – it will turn into a wrong in the course of time. Benevolence will after a time become prejudicial behavior. And however good the right may be that you want to bring to realization — it will turn into a wrong in the course of time. The reality is that there are no absolutes in this world. You work towards something that is good, and the way of the world will turn it into something bad. We therefore must seek ever new ways, look for new forms over and over again. This is what really matters.

The swing of the pendulum governs all such human efforts. Nothing is more harmful than belief in absolute ideals, for they are at odds with the true course of world evolution.  (…)

It is (Ahriman) who will and must be the bearer of our future civilization. This is a harsh truth, but it is important. It is intimately bound up with the fact that destructive powers will have to enter into the future progress of civilization. Above all — (…) — destructive powers will have to enter into the whole field of education, and especially the education of children, unless the matter is taken in hand with wisdom. Because of the general trend of civilization, and the customary practices and emotions of people, destructive powers will also enter more and more into the whole social sphere. They will above all bring more and more destruction into the actual relationships between people”.

Source: https://anthropopper.com/2019/02/05/difficult-days-for-steiner-waldorf-schools-in-england/