Links and Archives
The following is a partial record for what took place in the Wynstones parents challenge, along with information which supported the action, including a selection of articles and links.
- The Wynstones Parents’ Questionnaire Summary Report – this is where the challenge really got started, with a questionnaire to parents, which showed the trauma to parents and children of the sudden closure of the school – https://waldorfmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Wynstones-parent-questionnaire-summary-report.pdf
- The Wynstones Action Plan commentary of Richard House https://tinyurl.com/v7nxy8o
- The New View article by Arthur Edwards and Jonathan Swann plus letters from two parents https://tinyurl.com/tgbjout
- Matthew Barton’s review of Richard’s book https://tinyurl.com/vm4x4je
- The change.org petition against Ofsted: https://www.change.org/p/dfe-change-education-2020
- The pdf of Richard House’s e-book, Pushing Back to Ofsted: https://tinyurl.com/Pushback-to-Ofsted
- Letter to the Telegraph from Richard House and others (12 Sept 2006) Modern life leads to more depression among children – Telegraph
- The Insted Facebook page: www.facebook.com/InspiringNewStandards INSTED is a site and group whose mission is two-fold: To keep abreast of news relating to schools, teachers and Ofsted inspections, highlighting injustices and cases where schools have apparently not been fairly judged, as these are too often not heard. Secondly to highlight how things could be otherwise, with Inspiring New STandards for EDucation, which is what the name stands for.
- The new INSTED website: www.insted.uk. It is in the making, but a homepage is in place stating the purpose and steps ahead.
- Wynstones School does have a history of challenging government decisions, though not so evident at the moment. In 2006-2008 it along with OpenEYE was involved in a challenge to the government on the EYFS being imposed on all schools, public and private. We won the challenge, at least to the extent that Steiner schools were given exemptions to many of the EYFS goals for early years. See:https://openeyecampaign.wordpress.com/ and https://www.tes.com/news/steiner-parents-take-fight-court
- Lessons to be learned for Wynstones? Here is a report from Warwick Mansell in his blog ‘Education Uncovered’ about the three former Steiner Academies which were effectively closed, taken over by Avanti, renamed and rebranded – and just recently it has come out: stripped of the Waldorf ethos and currculum. Apparently the DfE never intended for them to continue with a Waldorf approach under Avanti. https://waldorfmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Education-Uncovered-_-Long-awaited-curriculum-review-at-three-former-Steiner-free-schools-effectively-kills-off-the-educational-approach-on-which-they-were-founded.pdf The SWSF letter to DfE concerning this is here: https://waldorfmatters.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/SWSF-Executive-Director-Letter-to-Secretary-of-State-Re-AST-Academies-7May2020.pdf
There have subsequently been many new reports coming out about the academies and Avanti – this will hopefully be added to here as well.