Steiner school for Rotorua

Rotorua is set to get its first Steiner school.

The group behind the move to get it here, the Rotorua Steiner School Initiative, has been looking for an experienced Steiner teacher and a suitable location for the school since October.

Last week a teacher with more than 35 years experience in Steiner schools offered his services to get the school up and running.

Now the race is on to find suitable premises by the proposed opening date of July 16.

The new school will be named Te Rito and run on the Steiner system of schooling, which takes children from kindergarten through to secondary.

Its founder, Rudolph Steiner, a 19th century Austrian philosopher, believed that children should be taught only art, craft and music until the age of 7 and then be introduced to mainstream academic subjects.

Parents in Rotorua wanting to school their children in the Steiner method have until now enrolled them in the Pathways Kindergarten, which teaches in the Steiner method up to the age of 7.

To get the mainstream curriculum taught in Steiner, they have had to move to Hastings or Tauranga.

Steering committee chairwoman Jade Flavell said that getting their new teacher, Peter Patterson, was a coup.

"We are very lucky to get him," she said.

"He has lots of experience. He started the first Steiner school in Bristol [in the UK] in the 1970s. Since then he's help set up the very successful Michael Parks school in Auckland and the Waikato Waldorf School in Hamilton."

Mrs Flavell said options for a new school included buying land behind the existing kindergarten or leasing buildings from Scion.

"Obviously we want to keep the kindergarten and the school in the one place. That's how Steiner works."

The Rotorua Steiner Schools Trust owns the land and buildings on which the Pathways Kindergarten stands.

The new school will be state integrated, meaning it will receive Government funding while still charging a private school fee.

Mrs Flavell said fees have yet to be set for the 16 students expected to start at the new school. The new students will comprise 11 already on the roll at the kindergarten and five who will move across from mainstream schools, she said.

Mrs Flavell said many "notable people" had attended Steiner schools over the years, including the Evers-Swindell twins.