Features of Steiner Education

Main Lesson

The curriculum is delivered primarily through a sequence of Main Lessons. Main Lessons are thematically based, and studied daily for 90-120 minutes across a 3-week period. There are linked across disciplines horizontally across a year and sequentially through the years, forming a very rich tapestry. This time frame allows for immersion and deep learning.

Within each Main Lesson, there is a 3-day rhythm that provides time for students to connect new concepts with previous understanding. Within each Main Lesson, there are a balance between academic content, and artistic and practical activities all based on the central theme. Other subject lessons also aim to link with the Main Lesson theme.

Early Childhood – Develop the limbs by doing

Young children from birth to age seven live primarily through their senses and learn best through imitation. Steiner Education’s primary focus is to nurture each child’s development by providing gentle, yet sensory-rich environments and play-based activities that encourage the young child to investigate the natural world, explore social relationships, and expand imaginative capacities. These activities lay crucial foundations for intellectual, emotional, and physical development.

Middle Childhood – Develop the heart through imagination

In Steiner Education, Primary school children learn best through lessons that touch their feelings and enliven their creative forces. The Steiner school curriculum is alive with fairy tales and fables, mythological sagas, and stirring biographies of historical figures. Teachers integrate storytelling, drama, rhythmic movement, visual arts, and music into their daily work, weaving a tapestry of experience that brings each subject to life in the child’s thinking, feeling, and learning while awakening their moral development and increasing their awareness of their place in the world.

Respected worldwide

Steiner education 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. 

Also, known as Waldorf education, Steiner education is a unique and distinctive approach to educating children practiced in 60 countries and cultures around the world (1200 schools and 2000 early childhood centres and kindergartens). Currently, it is one of the fastest-growing international independent school movements. The government of each country, where it is represented, recognises Steiner/Waldorf education.

Evidence / Research

Research data from a comprehensive research project on Australian Steiner schools conducted by Steiner Education Australia showed that: 

1. Over 80% of parents said they selected our schools because they are Steiner schools and reflected parents' own values.
2. 86% of parents were satisfied with their choice - a higher result than in other similar surveys.
3. 92% of parents were satisfied with an arts-based approach to learning.
4. 85% of parents valued the well-rounded nature of the education, the teach-to-the-child approach, and the culture and values of the school.
5. 88% of students have good relationships with their teachers and 90% reported good relationships with their peers
6. Alumni results were very positive. 89% agreed that what they learnt was highly appropriate to later life, 95% agreed that attending a Steiner school has been an asset to their life and 94% would recommend a Steiner School education.