A different class: the UK expansion of Steiner schools

Jeevan Vasgar:

The number of Steiner schools is set to expand, thanks to state funding via the coalition's 'free schools' policy. Their alternative approach is appealing, but do they offer a rounded education?

The school run resembles the exodus from a festival. There are vans with hippyish bumper stickers - Homeopathy Heals, says one - bouncing down a track to the sprawling car park, where women in ponchos hug their babies and chat.

Inside the Steiner Academy Hereford, which occupies a renovated Victorian school and converted farm buildings in the village of Much Dewchurch, it's a picture of pastoral charm. There's a babbling water feature in a courtyard lined with potted shrubs, and a pleasingly old-fashioned wooden staircase leading up to classrooms.

The kindergarten is just that - a triangular garden fringed with pine, apple and cherry trees laden with blossom where children in woolly hats sit on the ground making mud pies.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at May 31, 2012 1:56 AM
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