Hereford Waldorf School

Welcome to the Hereford Waldorf School

“The college welcomes pupils from the local Steiner School. They are excellent students”
- Dr Jonathan Godfrey, Principal of Hereford Sixth Form College

Our warm & friendly school is located in rural Herefordshire about 6 miles south of the city of Hereford. We offer Steiner education to around 270 pupils from ages 3 to 16 years old (Early Years and Classes 1 - 10).

New to the Hereford Waldorf School?

	- Find out About The School
	- Download our School Prospectus
	- Browse our Recommended Reading list
	- Find out more about the Academy Project

Hereford Steiner Academy succeeds in bid for EU funding

The Hereford Steiner Academy, due to open on 1^st September 2008, is one of a group of 12 Steiner schools from 8 European countries – Belgium, the Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Germany, Holland, Norway, Slovenia – to secure EU funding under the multilateral Comenius-School-Partnership-Programme. Two British qualification bodies (ASDAN and NOCN) are included in the bid as associate partners.

There are 650 Steiner schools in the European Area. One issue of shared interest to this network of schools is the challenge of providing accurate and reliable information relating to the programmes of teaching and learning within the schools, that offer an international curriculum framework, while documenting the specific achievements and educational progress of individual students as they leave school.

The funding will extend over two years and partners will seek to research and design a European Portfolio Certificate for students as they complete their time at school.

The first meeting takes place in September, in Potsdam, Germany. At the end of the 2-year project, all project parters will gather in Hereford for one of the final meetings at the Steiner Academy in Much Dewchurch.

Hereford Steiner Academy gets go-ahead

(Click here for previous Academy Updates)

Schools Minister, Andrew Adonis, has given the go ahead for the Hereford Steiner Academy to open in September 2008.

The Academy is sponsored by the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship and will be the first school in the UK to offer free Steiner education. The Hereford Steiner Academy will replace the Hereford Waldorf School and will have around 290 pupils aged three to 16 years on its roll when it opens in September. The school will benefit from significant capital investment from central government which will be used to refurbish much of the school's existing site as well as developing new teaching facilities.

The Principal of the new Academy, Trevor Mepham, said:

"We are delighted to become the first Steiner school in the UK to offer publicly-funded Steiner education and we look forward to opening in September. This is an opportunity for us to participate in the broader educational discourse; to listen, to learn and to contribute our own ideas, approaches and experiences."

Sylvie Sklan, chair of the transitional board of governors and lead representative for the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, said:

"We are very pleased that the Academies programme has enabled us to make the Steiner curriculum more open and accessible. The new Academy will provide greater choice for the parents of Herefordshire and enable more children to benefit from this creative education."

Schools Minister, Andrew Adonis, said:

"The academies programme is all about raising standards and offering choice for parents, so I'm delighted that the first state funded Steiner school can now open as an academy.

"Academies are allowed a flexible curriculum and an independent governing board, which is where they fit with the Steiner ethos. Academies are popular with parents, with on average three applications for every place and I'm sure the Hereford Steiner Academy will be no less popular."

Ofsted Report

We've recently received the results for the Ofsted inspection carried out on the 17th/18th March.

The report is very positive, and we're particularly pleased with the following observation:

“The quality of provision for pupils' spiritual, moral, social and cultural development is outstanding. Pupils generally enjoy school greatly and this is reflected in their good attendance and enthusiastic attitudes. Their moral and social awareness is very good due to the exceptional care taken by teachers to show respect for pupils’ views and provide the space to discuss issues deeply.“

The Ofsted Inspection page can be found here, and a PDF of the full report can be downloaded here.

Vacancies

From September 2008, Hereford Waldorf School is set to become the Hereford Steiner Academy – the first state-funded Steiner Waldorf school in the UK.

There will be a number of new posts to fill, and at present we have vacancies for trained and/or experienced Waldorf teachers.

Click here for the current list of vacancies.

Past Pupil Questionaire

As part of her research project for the Emerson College course ‘Education as an Art’, Kate Robertson would like to invite past pupils to take part in a short survey.
Read more...

School Travel Plan

The school Travel Plan is now complete and available to download.

The Hereford Waldorf School has been established in Much Dewchurch for nearly a quarter of a century and currently provides Steiner education for 270 pupils from 3-16. Like many rural schools in the county, pupils come from a wide area and often have to travel a long way to get to school.

The proposal to become an Academy will increase pupil places to 330. This will lead to an associated increase in the amount of car trips to the site, although the increase will be negligible compared to the existing levels of flow on the B4348.

The objective of the Travel Plan is to reduce the number of car journeys made by staff and parents to and from the school. The target is to reduce the number of cars journeys to and from the school by 10% over the next 3 years.

An Overview of the Hereford Steiner Academy Project

Each Steiner school is unique and yet shares core values and inspirations. In the UK this commonality is expressed through a national organisation – the Steiner/Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF) – which offers advice and support to its member schools.

For many years the UK Steiner schools movement has dreamt of achieving better recognition and wider acceptance, and over the years various attempts have been made to explore how Steiner schools might be State funded.

When New Labour came to power in 1997, the moment seemed right to begin a more focused lobbying effort for public funding. The case received a sympathetic hearing and in March 2000 the Secretary of State for Education, David Blunkett, announced the intention to look at how Steiner schools might join the maintained sector. In the following July the then Minister for Schools, Estelle Morris, instigated efforts to establish three pilot voluntary-aided Steiner schools.