Glorious Gloucestershire Linda Cook took this picture of Sezincote House and Gardens, near Moreton-in-marsh Waldorf schools are healthier for our children

✒ I MUCH appreciate your article by Claire Spreadbury (Echo, May 30) on regarding education in Scandinavia where children begin formal education at seven after pre-school life to ‘develop social skills, creativity and imagination.’

As a retired teacher trained in both main stream and Waldorf (Steiner) education, I have always advocated this later start and have supported the world’s widespread Waldorf system which is also practised in the UK.

These schools have been at the forefront of healthy education with healthy environmental attitudes for almost one hundred years.

Sadly, there has been a spate of misconceptions about these schools due to newspaper reports on our own Gloucestershire Waldorf School.

It is wise to look at the wider picture. Where I agree that there is always room for improvement in these schools as in many other schools, it is worth noting that Ofsted applies the same criteria for inspecting both mainstream schools and Waldorf schools without having a true understanding of the latter.

For instance, to try and force teachers of pre-school children to train to teach any subject at all to these infants goes against the grain.

Stats for four-year-olds is inadvisable in the Waldorf method but is thought to be a good thing by government education authorities. It would be sensible to question these authorities.

I have also been told that Ofsted can change the goal posts without notice and any efforts to meet their demands can go awry on an unannounced visit.

Much favourable research has been done on the outcomes of Waldorf education.

It is a progressive education for today and the future.

The number of these schools is on the rise all over the world including Britain.

The problem is that there is not enough funding in Britain for training teachers for these schools and as a result there are too many new academies that employ untrained teachers for this method.

Sometimes a manager is appointed by an outside body that has not an inkling of what it is all about.

Training is ongoing for life. Just reading a couple of books on this curriculum is not sufficient to take a managerial post however clever and well trained one is because education is not a business.

Waldorf schools never had managers or headteachers – there was no line management.

This is something recently imposed. Exams have never been the main goal and I am pleased to say that in British Columbia they have done away with exams in mainstream schools as well as in Waldorf schools, for the better.

I have become aware of a Waldorf academy to which children with educational problems from mainstream schools are being transferred but I understandthis Waldorf academy is not allowed to do the reverse resulting in an imbalance difficult to sustain.

These schools therefore are simply not being given a chance – or perhaps, as others have perceived, there may be some agenda on behalf of the education authorities.

I hope these wonderful Waldorf schools will continue to prove the healthier option for many more children to come. Mrs MD Power Taynton