A guest post from Melanie Byng, aka @ThetisMercurio on Twitter:

Looking at the Fullfledge Ecology School site I see that: ‘Our teachers will be creative, dedicated and both Steiner and State qualified‘.

There is no reason for Fullfledge teachers to be trained as Steiner teachers – unless Fullfledge is to be a Steiner Waldorf school. Steiner teacher training courses are based on Rudolf Steiner’s religion/belief system, anthroposophy. Here is another example, this time from the UK: The London Waldorf Seminar – Steiner education teacher training.

Does Fullfledge intend to create its own Steiner teacher training course, without the anthroposophy which underpins the entire education system? If so, what exactly would be left? If teachers at Fullfledge are trained on Steiner teacher training courses as they exist now, surely prospective parents should be informed about anthroposophy – especially as Fullfledge is already (in our opinion) describing itself dishonestly as not-a-Steiner school. This lack of honesty, however well-meaning some involved may be, will only make things more bewildering when life at the school goes wrong for staff or families.

As Esther Fidler commented in her post at UK Anthroposophy (and note that Ewout Van-Manen is still listed on the Fullfledge site as one of those responsible for ‘Vision and Curriculum’, as a Director of School Development at Greenwich Steiner School and – perhaps surprisingly – as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts):

In my opinion, the only thing setting Fullfledge apart from a regular Steiner school is that the initiative is not a member of the UK Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship (SWSF), a prerequisite for including Steiner in a schools name. Van-Manen said that many parents felt secure with the Steiner curriculum but that SWSF schools have become associated with dogma with which Fullfledge did not wish to be associated, as (he said) Most of the things you read on the internet about Steiner schools are true”.