Welcome to the UK’s first Academy offering Steiner education.
We provide a co-educational school for children from early childhood right through to school leaving age (3 to 16).
The Steiner Waldorf approach is based on the simple but profound insight that children learn in different ways at different stages of their development. Pupils learn traditional subjects through distinctive and time-tested teaching methods that serve the children’s intellectual, physical, emotional and spiritual development in ways that are suited to their age.
‘Waldorf’ is an unfamiliar term in the English-speaking world. The first school to actively work with Steiner’s ideas and principles opened in Stuttgart, in 1919. The school was an educational initiative for the children of the workers of the Waldorf Astoria cigarette company. Today, Steiner schools the world over share a curriculum outline, or framework that is commonly referred to as the Waldorf curriculum.
Steiner education works for all children irrespective of academic ability, class, ethnicity or religion; takes account of the needs of the whole child – academic, physical, emotional and spiritual; is based on an understanding of the relevance of the different phases of child development; develops a love of learning and an enthusiasm for school; sees artistic activity and the development of the imagination as integral to learning; is tried and tested and is part of state funded, mainstream provision in most European countries; is respected worldwide for its ability to produce very able young people who have a strong sense of self and diverse capacities that enable them to become socially and economically responsible citizens.
Academies are all-ability, state-funded schools established and managed by sponsors; our sponsor is the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (steinerwaldorf.org). Our educational approach is innovative, fresh and distinctive; we also have a specialism. Surrounded as we are by some of the country’s most beautiful landscape, our specialism is The Natural Environment.
The Steiner Academy Hereford may be a new Academy, but we have 25 years of history as the Hereford Waldorf School.
On the one hand, we are fortunate to be part of the village and community of Much Dewchurch with its own culture and history; we are also members of an international network of over 1,000 Steiner schools that are spread all over the world.