What is Steiner Education?
Over 100 years of joy in learning...
Steiner-Waldorf education provides an unhurried and creative learning environment where children can find joy in learning and experience the full richness of childhood, as opposed to early specialisation or academic hot-housing. The curriculum is a flexible framework which takes account of the whole child. It gives equal attention to the physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual needs of each child and works in harmony with the different phases of child development. Steiner-Waldorf education is respected worldwide for its ability to produce very able young people who have diverse capacities and a strong sense of self.
The first Steiner-Waldorf school opened in Stuttgart in 1919 for children of workers at the Waldorf-Astoria cigarette factory.
The school's benefactor was the factory’s managing director, Emil Molt, who asked Dr Rudolf Steiner to found and lead the school in its early stages. It was to be co-educational, child-centred, and open to children of every social and economic class. The Stuttgart school grew rapidly and schools inspired by its pedagogical principles started up elsewhere in Germany, Switzerland, England, Hungary, Austria, Norway, Holland and the USA. Although many schools in Europe, including the original school, were closed under the Nazi regime, all were reopened after the Second World War.
Today, the Steiner-Waldorf movement is international with schools in every continent. Steiner schools form the largest group of independent, non-denominational schools in the world. There are currently over 1,000 Steiner schools worldwide, including 35 in the UK. There are over 2,000 Early Years settings in a total of 64 different countries.
Alder Bridge School in Padworth, Berkshire, is the only Steiner-Walforf school in the Thames Valley, catering for Early Years, Primary and Secondary Steiner-Waldorf education.
