CHAIR OF COLLEGE, STEINER SCHOOL, EDINBURGH

Three

CHILDREN

It’s been both sobering and enlightening to look at our broad curriculum, strong community and child- friendly architecture through the prism of ensuring that the school remains a safe learning environment.

In Steiner education, we’re lucky to

have the benefit and wisdom from colleagues across the world, being part of a global network of more than 1,200 Steiner Waldorf schools. This has been valuable in helping us to consider their experience when developing our own new paths for learning.

Stringent measures have been implemented. Our whole school campus now has dedicated entrances and ecological sanitiser locations for different parts of the school.

Packed lunches replace school meals, prepared by senior pupils and run as

a business, while emphasising the importance of sourcing quality, local and organic ingredients. Our Friday Market is stalled.

The senior choir, timetabled each morning to waken the pupils, is abeyant.

The restrictions are an opportunity for inventiveness too. Our community of some 150 families feels the impact of parents remaining off campus. Virtual assemblies and a weekly e- zine hold this affinity.

Teachers’ efforts to deliver lessons virtually in ways that continue to

instil a love and curiosity for learning are supported by a tech department developing digital literacy. Individual access to online lesson content continues, lowering concern for missed education while isolating; and some pupils are virtually present in lessons.

Plays would normally be performed in our theatre. Instead, one class produced a radio play remotely from makeshift home studios. It was recorded on smartphones and broadcast to the school, and by the BBC.

Piloting an alternative educational

passport to examinations, our 13- yearold pupils undertook months- long research into an independent project of their choosing. Normally, they would put up an exhibition of their work in school. Instead, pupils learnt how to build a webpage from scratch to create the exhibition online.

Learning how to learn well enables students to meet new situations with resilience, adaptability and resourcefulness; never overwhelmed, always stretched, such is their capacity for focused, self- directed activity.