SWSF seminar to hear Tory explain ’state funding opportunities for Steiner schools’

Mentioned in an earlier blog post was news of the Conservative Party’s policy regarding Steiner education.  Here’s a heads up to notify readers of a forthcoming ’special pre-election seminar’ organised by the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF). SWSF heavyweight Sylvie Sklan will kick off proceedings and high ranking Tory Sam Freedman will explain Conservative policy to the throng. Also speaking will be somebody from the New Schools Network  and Emma Craigie, presumably the daughter of Tory journalist William Rees-Mogg. Rees-Mogg is proud of his daughter’s choice of a Steiner school for her kids. The New Schools Network is newly set up and largely unknown to me, its website is here. It registered as a company in June this year and was formally registered a charity in October this year. Seems like they have a plan and know exactly how to go about organising themselves and they’re quick to make friends aren’t they. Not that they’d be without friends in the City because 4 of the 5 founding directors have or have held over 20 company directorships between them. One director of New Schools Network sits on Ark Schools, another used to sit on El Oro Mining & Exploration (amusing but old piece about El Oro here) but now sticks to Insurance. It’s good to see business types so speedily setting up a philanthropic venture and it’s surely coincidence that the establishment of New Schools Network is running more or less in tandem with the setting out of Conservative Party education policy.

Here’s the poster for the seminar:

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

Moving Forward

A special pre-election seminar about possible developments in the state funding opportunity for Steiner schools

17 November 2009

10.00 – 15.00

VENUE:  Room 2, The Charity Centre, 24 Stevenson Way,

Euston, London

PROGRAMME

10.00    Arrival and coffee

10.15    Introductions, outline of the day and discussion – Sylvie Sklan

11.15    If the Conservatives win the election….

Rachel Wolf of the New Schools Network will present proposals for the state funding of Steiner Schools.

Sam Freedman, Conservative Special Advisor, will answer questions on future Conservative education policy.

12.45                     Lunch at Chutneys (vegetarian Indian)

13.45    Discussion about our perception of the benefits and concerns implied

by these proposals – Emma Craigie

14.45    Next steps

15.30                     End

……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………..

The news of the seminar is tucked away on the SWSF website in the area there titled ‘Professional Development’, a subarea of the website given over to teacher related things.  The £25  attendance fee goes to SWSF and the application to attend form is processed by Jane Avison. Readers of this blog might remember Jane from an earlier post (look for GATF toward the end of that post).

It’s clear the SWSF are cosying up to the Tories well in advance of the election. With Plymouth axing their beloved Steiner Education BA and other Steiner courses they still have high hopes for the future. Who can blame them either when the Tories are endorsing Steiner education and further fragmentation, oops should we say increasing diversity of provision within the education sector. The New Schools Network appears to me to have been  set up to enable that splintering process and at the forthcoming SWSF seminar their  spokesperson will be offering proposals  for the state funding of Steiner schools. Their more general role I’d expect to be disseminating info/resources for people to use in creating their very own personalised vision of what a school should be.

Boring blog (tags) admin info

I’m new to blogging and haven’t quite got a handle on tags and the best way to use them. I’m aware now though that my haphazard tagging system needs, erm, improving. At the end of this year I’ll be editing all blog posts and amending their tags according to whatever slick,  professional and over-organised system of tagging I come up with to replace the dartboard system currently in place.

Anthroposophists – do they get their just deserts?

News of the Conservative’s intention of expanding state funding for Steiner education was widely covered by the press and prompted a brief but entertaining exchange of opinion on the Evening Standard’s website and a splendid blog article which, amongst other things, destroyed the credibility of the Woods Report

From the same blog article and news to me at the time was that Nick Kollerstrom, active within the Science group of the national Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain, is a holocaust denier.  When the news appeared over on the PLANS forum, historian Peter Staudenmaur commented:

Another member of the growing list of anthroposophical holocaust deniers. This is a genuine problem for anthroposophy, and one that isn’t really being addressed by the rest of the anthroposophist movement…it is a particularly disturbing instance of the broader anthroposophist predilection for conspiracy theories, combined with longstanding anthroposophist beliefs about Jews and Jewishness.

The UK’s national Anthroposophical Society is aware of problems arising from the behaviour of its members. Its 2007 Annual Report says:

A number of Anthroposophical societies have been accused of holding, or been held to account for the views expressed by members. The society attempts at all times to emphasise that the Society holds no view or political stance on any exoteric issues, nor are any of its members’ views to be held to be those of the Society. Council members regularly review publication of articles by members for public dissemination.

A similarly worded statement has appeared in the national Society’s Annual Reports for the last few years.

Presumably, if a member brings the national Anthroposophical Society into disrepute then the Society would take action but it is unclear if and what sort of action would be taken whereas, for example, University College London ditched Kollerstrom as soon as they learned of his repugnant views – his position there as an Honorary Research Fellow was terminated  in April 2008. Kollerstrom last had an article published in the Science Group’s newsletter dated September 2008 some 6 months after UCL gave him the boot. One would hope that nothing further penned by him appears in a Science Group or any other Anthroposophical organisation publication until he publicly changes his position regarding the reality of the holocaust as historical fact. Perhaps Dr Graham Kennish of Plymouth University’s Steiner-Waldorf/Hereford Academy Research Networkand and an Anthroposophical educator might educate Kollestrom as to the error of his ways – Kollestrom and Kennish are both active in, perhaps members of, the Science group of the national Anthroposophical Society in Great Britain.

Rather than guess at how or even if  Kollerstrom’s peers in Anthroposophy  might sanction or discipline him let’s take a look at some known instances of misbehaviours by people in positions of responsibility within Anthroposophical settings and how the wrongdoers were disciplined.

The tragic tale of a Steiner school bursar getting into debt, ripping off the school and committing suicide rather than face up to the consequences has been covered in an earlier blog post.

Although we won’t know how David Drage, the fraudster, would have been disciplined, we do know that the school’s Resources Manager, Richard Zienko, was suspended from his position more or less immediately after the fraud was discovered in June 2006. Zienko resigned as Resources Manager in October of the same year. Zienko’s suspension came about as a result of advice received by the school, advice given to ensure an impartial investigation into the school’s accounts could take place. It would seem that the school’s disciplinary measures in this instance were fair enough even if the school’s financial controls and so on were faulty.

A little while ago a teacher behaving abysmally in a Steiner school made a few headlines. OK, lighting a cigarette and passing it around the class for kids to try isn’t exactly the crime of the century, it is illegal though as well as being potentially harmful to the kids but notice how the school dealt with the errant teacher. Instead of dismissal the teacher was subject to undisclosed disciplinary measures ‘proportionate in the circumstances’.

Presumably it was the Canterbury news and the fallout from it that resulted in this minuted report of an Anthroposophical meeting at which the SWSF rep told the meeting ‘Canterbury has had some undermining attacks and some bad publicity – they are dealing with these problems very sensibly’. So, not sacking the teacher and not disclosing how the errant teacher was punished is, apparently, dealing with problems very sensibly. Hmmm, well at least the teacher was punished is about the best can be said of that incident.

By the way, at the same Anthroposophical meeting the same SWSF rep reported on an ‘Interesting discussion on the generic characteristics of Steiner Waldorf education’ which doesn’t seem to have gotten any further than asking, ‘Do we need to mention Anthroposophy or Rudolf Steiner?’

Bearing in mind the commonality of Steiner schools, readers might compare the – to my mind – lenient Canterbury disciplinary measures with those at a Steiner school in Newcastle, Australia.

There, a founder member and a teacher at a Steiner school, Roger Graham, wrote love letters to a 16-year old female student, a relationship that later became a sexual one. The teacher was sacked in 2001, reemployed by the same school in 2003, sacked again in 2006 and resurfaced in 2009 at the same school as a ‘consultant to the teachers’. The teacher is also allowed to help in the school’s garden but only ‘so long as there are no kids around’. I pity the gnomes in that scenario. Full story can be found online here

So there you go, too few examples to identify any pattern in how Anthroposophists deal with the misbehaviours of those within their ranks but if you know of any other instances please feel free to get in touch.

Plymouth University Axes Steiner BA Degree Course

University of Plymouth – the ‘enterprise University’ as it promotes itself – has ceased offering its BA course in Steiner Waldorf Education. I was informed by Plymouth’s Faculty of Education that the Steiner BA course was dropped due to insufficient demand for it, the course simply wasn’t attracting enough students.

The educational wing of the UK Anthroposophy movement will be deeply hurt to see the scrapping of the course, a collaborative venture between the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) and the University of Plymouth which has been running since 1992. The Plymouth Steiner Waldorf BA certification is considered by Anthroposophists to be the alternative if not the equivalent to a mainstream teacher training qualification. Also axed has been the Foundation Degree in Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education. The fate of a Steiner education degree at MA level and some post-grad work is unclear at this stage. Plymouth assured me that students already enrolled on the now abandoned Steiner courses will be allowed to continue with their studies through to completion.

I was also told the University is considering including ‘some’ Steiner related material within a broad based degree course titled Education Studies but not a single course bearing the Steiner imprimatur survived the carnage at Plymouth. The only fixed Steiner presence remaining at Plymouth is a rump group dubbing itself the Steiner-Waldorf / Hereford Academy Research Network, a rather fancy title for a group of  five people.  That’s what I was told or learned before the story broke in the press.

Yesterday the Guardian newspaper reported the story in a piece penned by Polly Curtis, the paper’s education editor. When it comes to Steiner-related news Polly isn’t renowned for any critical analysis of what she’s told by Anthroposophists and her latest effort at the Guardian is highly likely to be simply regurgitated Anthroposophical feed lines.

According to Polly Curtis the reason for Plymouth axing the Steiner Waldorf BA is all down to the cost to students taking a second degree. She writes:

The university’s decision is being blamed on the government’s withdrawal of funding for second degrees. As many people begin the course later in life after a change in career, they faced charges upward of £8,000 a year instead of the standard £3,225.

To put that into some sort of context, a typical student without rich parents and seeing a BA/BSc through to completion can expect to be saddled with a debt of about £20,000. Students are aware of the price they’ll have to pay for a degree but it doesn’t appear to have had a significant impact on student numbers nationally.

Nowhere in the Guardian report do we find anything about the actual numbers of students enrolling for the axed BA course and so no comparisons of student intake prior to the government’s withdrawal of funding for second degrees can be made. Instead Guardian readers are only offered Anthroposophical educator Christopher Clouder’s explanation for the low intake of students, which was that ‘people who wanted to do this course were priced out of it’. That explanation presumes most middle-aged people wanting to take up teaching Steiner education already have a degree of some sort. Possible but even if it’s true the way around it if cost is an issue would be to opt for a PGCE and Plymouth does offer PGCE’s (see here for example). Rather than axe a course at short notice –first term is well under way and ends in a few weeks – surely if there was sufficient interest in the course then the University would instigate a Steiner slanted PGCE course. Under current rules the middle-aged or any other existing degree holders suffer no penalty for taking a PGCE.

Of course providing a PGCE for Steiner types would reduce the intake for the Steiner Education BA course but Plymouth didn’t only axe the Steiner Waldorf BA, it also axed its Foundation Degree in Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Education.  This course is described on the SWSF website as:

A two-year programme for Early Years Practitioners and Assistants. Operates through flexible and distributed learning. It is taught in a variety of locations and is structured to enable students to study over some weekends, in residentials and in the classroom. This is accredited at Level 5. There is a progression to the Steiner Waldorf BA (Hons.), an Early Childhood Studies degree or Early Years Professional Status.

Level 5 being degree level last I heard surely there’d be room for manoeuvre here, perhaps merge the two BA level courses and create a Steiner PGCE?

Polly Curtis might have missed a scoop or two for the Guardian.

Not reported in the Guardian and not mentioned by Plymouth’s Faculty of Education is that the university has had a recent appointment, the new boss there being Vice Chancellor Professor Wendy Purcell. Remember that new tagline Plymouth has, the enterprise University? Well, Wendy’s presence is entirely in keeping with that. The university has been made over to one more in keeping with a market driven education sector. Departments have been downsized, the faces that didn’t fit with the new enterprise ethos have been sacked, and efficiencies have been made.

We have heard rumours here at UK Anthroposophy that financial management at Plymouth had been somewhat lax in recent years and, on appointment, one of Wendy’s first acts was to see to the removal from post (given the sack was the rumour I heard) of a Head of Finance at Plymouth.

Against that backdrop of a makeover of Plymouth from provincial and pedestrian university to a lean clean market-driven machine it is little wonder that an esoteric low intake course such as the Steiner BA would get the chop.

Readers might take note that requests made by myself and others to Plymouth for details of the Steiner Waldorf BA course materials – its reading lists and the like – have in the past been either refused or ignored. So, even were there to be more to the reason for axing the BA course than Plymouth or the Guardian is giving out, it’s going to be a hard task to discover it. I’d ask the SWSF for a comment but, sad to say, the SWSF refuses to acknowledge let alone reply to my emails. I’d also email a comment to the Guardian report but for some reason or other the paper isn’t taking comments on that Polly Curtis report.

Happily, a correspondent using Freedom of Information has prised from Plymouth’s Faculty of Education basic documents such as recommended reading for students of the BA Steiner course and has passed on findings to me. It shouldn’t have to be this way. Members of the public shouldn’t have to resort to legal means to discover what or how our publicly funded Universities are teaching BA students; registered charities such as SWSF shouldn’t behave like sulky adolescents when they receive enquiries from a member of the public.

Anyway, the documentation in front of me includes the Student Handbook for year 2008/9, hardly a top-secret hush hush item. Ironically, it proclaims the BA course to have had “an important role in helping the Steiner Waldorf movement develop professional standards in teacher education”, standards the secretive SWSF and adminstrators of the BA course might fruitfully emulate.

The contents of the information within the Handbook, the course outlines, reading lists and the recommended texts would appear bizarre to the general public or to academics and others approaching education from any perspective other than that of the esoteric/occult and spiritual one informing that of the Anthroposopophical educator.

Perhaps fear of ridicule is the reason Plymouth tried for so long not to divulge what students would be learning there, ridicule for delivering a teacher training course from an esoteric or occult perspective. However, there are already examples of Steiner teacher training course outlines, reading lists etc out there on the net (link to come, links now here, and here).  Steiner pedagogy is fairly rigidly adhered to wherever it is taught or put into practice and so it follows that the teaching materials for one course will be pretty much the same wherever the course is taught. So, why the secrecy about Plymouth’s own Steiner teacher training course materials?

Well, one thing that will differentiate Anthroposophical training courses from country to country is the written language of the texts students will be reading. As we know, Steiner lectured and wrote in German and the English translations of his original work are often Bowdlerised, or incomplete or truncated versions of the originals (see here for example). Perhaps amongst the recommended texts for students of the Plymouth Steiner course some unexpurgated examples of Steiner’s infamous racism can be found but I’m beggared if I’m going to source the texts, purchase or borrow them and then read them all to see if anything toxic is within them. Instead I’ve listed the texts here on the blog so that readers can see what prospective UK Steiner taught teachers read before they’re let loose on children. I’d be particularly interested to hear from readers should they know if any of the listed texts contain examples of Steiner’s racism or anything else in need of a public airing.

Presumably most readers will know of the controversies surrounding Steiner and Anthroposophy and so it’d be pointless rehashing the various claims and counter claims on the issues here in this post. There will be an article covering the controversies here on the blog at some stage but let’s just stick with Plymouth University for now and demonstrate via the recommended reading for its Steiner Waldorf  Education BA course an example of the way Steiner belief is structured on racist notions.

Here’s a quote from one of the recommended texts students study, Steiner’s ‘Knowledge of Higher Worlds and its Attainment’:

…people and races are after all,merely different developmental stages in our evolution toward a pure humanity.The more perfectly that individual members of a race or people express the pure,ideal human type-the more they have worked their way through from the physical and mortal to the super sensible and immortal realm-the “higher” this race or nation is.

Now, I don’t have the exact same edition of the text the quote comes from but it is only slightly different from this quote:

…peoples and races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race or a nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from the physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable. The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation

The above quote is from page 108 of the fifth edition of the same Steiner text and was published in 1914. The text can be found online here

OK, that reeks of racism to me but we don’t know the context within which students on the Steiner BA course will be considering it and the example is only offered as an example of one strand of Steiner’s racist doctrine.

Returning to Plymouth and the formerly highly confidential Steiner Waldorf Education BA programme’s official Student Handbook. The Handbook is a good start when looking at the links from the Steiner camp within the Faculty of Education at Plymouth to the UK Anthroposophy movement as a whole (example here). Oh boy, you only have to scratch the surface…

From the Student Handbook for year 2008/09, page 3, regarding expanding their BA programme:

“…we plan to complement this with regular off-campus residentials at Trebullom Farm, an Anthroposophical environmental teaching and learning centre in rural North Cornwall”

Trebullom Farm is owned by Peredur Trust, a charity and registered company running an Anthroposophical social care residential setting. It has an estate valued at over 1.25 million quid, runs a biodynamic farm as part of the remedial work and setting it provides for between 6 to 8 residents in need of care. Until recently the Trust kept itself to itself but appears to be freeing up some of its spare land to other Anthroposophical projects so as to steady out a somewhat erratic income. Plymouth’s John Burnett – Programme Director of the University of Plymouth’s BA in Steiner Waldorf Education – set up Trebullom Farm Project in Autumn of 2006 as a sort of Anthroposophical environmental residential school. At about the same time Bowhill Educational Trust, a near dormant Anthroposophical environmental charity, became involved with both the Farm project and with Peredur. This triumvirate was actively planning Anthroposophical eco-style weekend bashes last I heard.

Again from the Student Handbook, page 10, and describing student modules of study that have a ‘hands on’ approach:

“There are residential workshops led by the Hiram Trust where you will be introduced to aspects of the craft curriculum”

Hiram Trust, a registered charity, is another Anthroposophical organisation, is or was an affiliate member of SWSF, is linked/pointed  to by the national Anthroposophical Society website and has its own website here.

Hiram Trust has an interesting constitutional power in that it allows itself to ‘explore the therapeutic value of a craft curriculum for the incarnating adolescent’, has an income in the order of £200,000 and assets of over a million quid. In year 2005 through to at least 2007 a trustee of Hiram was also Chief Director of Ruskin Mill Educational Trust, another Anthroposophical organisation. Ruskin is a very big player in the Anthroposophical social care field. Hiram rents space to Ruskin for one of  its, Ruskin’s, operations. Now get this, again for year 2007, the brother of the trustee who was also Chief Executive of Ruskin is the director of The Waldorf College Project. Waldorf College, an Anthroposophical organisation, received donations from Hiram in the same year. Talk about incestuous!

Nothing much else in the Student Handbook to note except to point out that many of the lecturers, visiting lecturers etc will have links to the wider Anthroposophical community. Christopher Clouder, for example,  is a tutor on the Plymouth Steiner Waldorf BA module titled ‘ The Image of the Human Being Derived from Anthroposophy’. Clouder is amongst other things the current boss of SWSF.

There are and have been links between Plymouth University and the wider UK Anthropsophical community for a long time. In recent times Beechtree Steiner kindergarten in Leeds reports a small donation, about £500, from the University in year 2007, another £1000 went to Hebden Bridge Steiner Initiative (aka Calder Valley Steiner Education) spread over years 2006 and 2007. Various other Anthroposophical schools have seen Plymouth Steiner Education BA students training within their schools via placements and so on.

Regarding Plymouth University, two other Anthroposophical organisations are of interest. Novalis Trust (ormerly known as Cotswold Chine School) and the Godparents Anthroposophical Training Fund (formerly the Godparents Association, it doesn’t have a website) have long and strong links with University of Plymouth, or Plymouth University whichever you prefer.

Novalis Trust is now an amalgam of several Anthroposophical organisations but its basic activity is in the Anthroposophical social care field. In years 2006 and 2007 it reported that 14 members of its staff were studying for MA degrees at Plymouth . In 2006, when known as Cotswold Chine School and operated solely as a residential special needs school with a maximum of around 40 pupils, it reported 13 teachers to be ‘working toward the MA in Waldorf in partnership with Plymouth University’ and another 4 teachers working for postgrad certification in Special Needs Education at the University of the West of England (UWE) with UWE delivering some teaching sessions at Cotswold Chine.

Back in 2003 Cotswold Chine reported that it had  ‘effectively formed a partnership with both Plymouth University and the University of the West of England with courses being delivered at Cotswold Chine…..Initially 15 members of Cotswold Chine Education department are studying the new modules’.

UWE was the University of Philip Woods at the time he was undertaking and leading the government commissioned research eventually published as ‘Steiner Schools in England’. Just as a matter of interest, our old friend Dr Peter Gruenewald was Cotswold’s School Medical Officer around the year 2005.

The Godparents Anthroposophical Training Fund (GATF), like Novalis Trust, is both a registered charity and an incorporated company. GATF doesn’t fund godparents, it funds students, students studying Steiner courses at Plymouth University. It has another thing in common with Plymouth University; it doesn’t like to divulge information.

GATF’s registered office is in Stourbridge, home of a host of other Anthroposophical organisations. GA TF reported an income of around £88,000 last year and assets of £807,000. The secretary, Jane Avison, is also a trustee of Drayton Manor Trust, an Anthroposophical special needs school. The majority of GATF income comes from two sources, Drayton Manor Trust and Camphill. GATF annual accounts routinely convey thanks to Drayton and ‘Camphill’ for their continued support. When asked to clarify which Camphill was donating to GATF, the GATF secretary, Jane Avison, cited the Data Protection Act in declining to divulge the information.

Back in 2005/2006 Drayton Manor Trust reported in its acoounts for year ending 2006 a £10,000 pound donation to GATF and a £20,000 to SWSF and reported that during the same period Mrs Jane Avison was an administrator and employee of both SWSF and Drayton Manor but that ‘She is excluded from any decisions to donate funds to trusts in which she is a connected party.’ Many readers will know that SWSF refused to make public the name of the person or organisation stumping up the sponsorship money necessary for and enabling the Hereford Steiner Academy to go ahead.

More pertinent to what is happening at Plymouth, in recent years right up to its latest accounts and report for year ending 2008 GATF has reported the charity’s grant making policy:

“Grants are made to students on the BA course in Waldorf Education at the University of Plymouth, which are funded by the donation received from Drayton Manor Trust. Otherwise, it is the policy to only make grants in exceptional cases when a loan is not appropriate.”

For the same year GATF reported outgoings as part of its charitable activities (i.e grants and loans) amounting to just over £84,000. The amount was over £90,000 the preceding year. For the year 2008, £54,000 of the £84,000 charitable expenditure went out in the form of grants and, as we know via the GATF grant making policy, a lot of that £54,000 would have gone to students on Plymouth’s Steiner Waldorf Education course. No shortage of money for the Steiner BA students there it seems and no shortage of students for the MA course at Plymouth.

If a dozen and more students all from the same small Anthroposophical organisation enrolled for the MA course then surely students nationwide must have been clamouring to get into Steiner courses at Plymouth. Competition to get into Plymouth’s Steiner courses must have been very fierce. If it wasn’t then it raises serious questions about the fairness and openness of the admissions procedure to the MA course and perhaps the other Steiner courses at Plymouth, questions we can add to those concerning the reason for Plymouth’s axing of its Steiner related courses.

Raphael Steiner School closes

Although its website is still running, Raphael Steiner School, an Early years/kindergarten in Thornham Magna, Suffolk, has closed. Announcing the news in its Summer 2009 newsletter, the Steiner Schools Fellowship (SWSF) noted “the remote position of the school…along with costs involved in buying land and providing classroom spaces” as factors contributing toward the school’s demise.

Raphael Steiner school aimed from its inception in 2002 to establish and maintain a school working towards ecological principles, so adding a distinctive and chic veneer to the obligatory Anthroposophical underpinnings of any ‘Steiner’ school. However,  Raphael’s finances were always a tad wobbly and in 2007 – the last year the school  submitted accounts to any regulatory authority – although the school was operating at or near to full capacity (with around 30 children on roll) the school was struggling to remain solvent.

Raphael Steiner school’s overheads were high with well over half of its income of 120,000 GBP in accounting year 2007 being swallowed up by wages. The school was also saddled with a 160,000 GBP bank loan – perhaps taken out to fund land costs and building of the two log cabins the school operated from – and servicing of the bank loan together with other unavoidable overheads must have been an ongoing financial challenge for the school.

Financial difficulties apart, an Ofsted inspection of the school in 2007 could also have  had an impact on the school’s viability. A few concerns were noted in the report. For example:

Children are beginning to learn the importance of personal hygiene as staff remind them to clean their hands after they use the toilet and before eating. However, the setting does not ensure children have access to heated water for washing and they use a shared bowl of water and towel for cleaning hands within the main play room. As a result children may be at risk of cross infection

It was also noted by the inspector that the school:

hadn’t given full consideration to security, including what they may do in the event of stranger danger and how they may respond if a child becomes lost

Similarly, although the school (or setting as Ofsted call it below) undertook measures assuring child welfare and protection, the inspection report noted:

…the setting’s policies are out of date and do not clearly reflect current advice about what the setting should do in the event of an allegation being made against an adult at the setting. As a result children’s well-being in these situations is not assured.

According to the SWSF Summer 2009 newsletter, many of the kids formerly enrolled at Raphael Steiner school have moved over to Cambridge Steiner School, an Anthroposophical school slammed on health, safety and welfare grounds in a report of an Ofsted inspection there in 2008. A signal of the seriousness of the shortfalls found at Cambridge appears in the opening pages of Cambridge Steiner’s 2008 Ofsted:

…although pupils are well supported and nurtured, the school does not provide adequately for their health, safety and welfare. Many of its policies and practices do not meet the regulations for registration. A number of these were noted in previous inspections and have not been adequately addressed

A potted version of the alarming findings contained within the Cambridge Steiner School 2008 Ofsted inspection report can be found here in an earlier blog post.

Other children formerly on the roll at Raphael Steiner school ended up in Norwich Steiner school. Norwich  Steiner school (i.e. an Anthroposophical school) is a kindergarten/Early Years setting with an intake and fee structure similar to Raphael’s. Though weaknesses were noted, judging by Ofsted’s inspections the Norwich Steiner is quite a good school. Two Norwich Ofsteds are available online, one took place in 2006 and the other in 2007 and both can be downloaded from this part of the Norwich Steiner school’s website.

Regarding the weaknesses at Norwich Steiner school, in brief:  hygiene was said to be compromised, the admissions register/system didn’t meet required regulations and its safeguarding children procedure was muddled in that it was unclear as to which authorities should be notified in the event of allegations being made against staff. Oh, and the school’s door security system was ‘not robust enough to ensure children do not leave, or intruders gain access, having the potential to compromise the safety of children’.

Continuity of a sort, then, for parents transferring their children from Raphael Steiner to other Anthroposophical schools in the region. Or, to paraphrase the SWSF Summer 2009 newsletter’s way of putting it, ‘the work of Raphael goes on in other forms’.

Michael House School – dangerous in 2007 and financially failing for years

Michael House School, a Steiner education school and Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) member, was in the very recent past heading for financial ruin and is still in bad financial shape. The school raised funds back in 2003/2004 by selling off land but has failed to make a profit in any year since then.

The school’s Annual Report & Accounts for year 2007 show the school to have run up a 100,000 GBP loss on an income of some 375,000 GBP, the reasons being:

(the) School continued to funds its activities via the capital that had been raised in previous years rather than through balancing its income from pupils and its operating costs. Records pertaining to the fee discounting system used during the period of these accounts were not adequate for the current Trustees to be able to satisfy themselves that the system was applied equitably and fairly. The level of discounts given to fee payers, the reasons for granting discounts and the manner in which these decisions were arrived at were not fully recorded in the Trustees minutes at the time.

In September 2008 the Charity Commission provided the trustees in post with an ‘Order’

to empower them to manage the School, re-establish the Association and its membership, call an AGM to present these accounts and to elect new Trustees

all of which they did before the end of the year. A Charity Commission Order is usually applied for by the trustees in exceptional circumstances when, for example, they need to make some sort of change or decision but are prevented or hampered from doing so by their constitution or way of operating.

In Michael House’s case the changes made appear to have been root and branch and by the end of 2008, when all of the changes mentioned above had been made, only one of the original trustees in post when requesting the Order remained, the others had all been replaced.

It was the new trustees that signed the 2007 Report & Accounts and it was they that offered the reasons as to why Michael House School had reached such a perilous financial situation. It possibly hadn’t helped school finances that until the new trustees came in the accounts were recorded by hand in old fashioned ledgers. Also, in accounting year ending 2006 the former trustees were noting that increased fees were being absorbed by increases in salaries for the staff – not a good way to balance the books. It appears the old guard finally gave up hope when the school’s Development Steering Group which had been meeting to explore the idea of a multimillion pound development at the school ceased its meetings in April 2007 without having firmed up any recommendations.

Still losing money, the tone of the school’s Report & Accounts for year ending 2008 is one of optimism. The trustees reported a 10% reduction in expenditure, an increase in fees, improved financial controls and much reduced losses. Perhaps encouraged by the use of a computer, the school even saw one of its “rare amplified music events” (as the trustees put it) when a local band lent a hand in school fund raising efforts.

Michael House School (not to be confused with Michael Hall School, the one that was ripped off by its own bursar) is in Shipley (Derbyshire) and was founded in the 1930’s. It has about 150 children on its roll and an average annual income of over 400,000 GBP. When last inspected by Ofsted it was a dangerous place for children.

The most recent Ofsted Inspection of Michael House School took place in February 2007. All of the following quotes below are taken directly from the report of the Inspection.

At the time of the 2007 Inspection the schools policy for child protection was out of date and, worryingly, the report notes:

Most administrators, teachers and assistants have been checked with the Criminal Records Bureau (CRB). The most recently appointed members of staff are currently having checks. Staffing and recruitment procedures do not comply with latest regulations, however, as they do not show securely that individuals’ identities, certificates and professional qualifications are checked and recorded.

Elsewhere in the report inspectors noted:

The climbing frame in the muddy adventure playground presents a dangerous hazard to pupils as it has no soft surface materials beneath the equipment.

Fire Officer recommendations had “not yet been completed with the urgency required”, there still being a fire hazard, for one example, in a school warehouse.

Inspectors shared the concerns of parents regarding management of the school:

a significant proportion of parents feel that the school is not well managed: for example, they express frustration that decisions take a long time to be made and even longer time to be implemented. The inspectors agree with this view.

So, the kids were at the time of the inspection at risk of injury when playing on a climbing frame and there was a fire risk in at least one area of the school. On top of that there was the potential for harm from staff;  ‘most’ staff had been checked with the CRB but most means not all of them had been checked. Recently appointed staff had not been checked with CRB before being appointed and even when staff were checked Michael House School had no sure way of knowing that the people they appointed were who they say they were or that their qualifications were genuine.