Brighton Waldorf School will operate on a “flexi” basis this term, as senior leaders prepare the school for further Covid-19 restrictions.
The Steiner school’s new “blended, flexible curriculum” will support pupils learning and financially assist parents.
While in school, students will focus on art, design and creative subjects, sports and music. When pupils are not in physical attendance, they will receive lessons through their preferred home-schooling platform until November, when a new Threshold Learning Suite will be introduced.
Parents will have the option to decide upon the number of days per week their child attends school. The flexi basis will make schooling more affordable to parents, who may be dealing with unexpected changes in income during the pandemic. Parents will be able to “economically decide” how many days to keep their children at home.
Commenting on the new flexi schooling offer, school director Damian Mooncie said: “The flexi schooling offer is there to support all pupils and families impacted by the COVID pandemic. We envisage that the cultural and social offer to interact and work together will support young people’s well-being by gaining a sense of identity within our school community and give a release from the constraints of social isolation.
“We designed the new way of delivering our curriculum with two aims in mind. Firstly, to support local home schooling families by giving them access to our school’s educational, cultural and social provision that can be integrated with their elective home educational programme; and secondly for our existing and prospective parents, to give them the opportunity to economically decide upon the number of days per week their children can attend the school, where they can still meet with their friends, experience the joys of childhood, see their teachers and continue on their learning journeys.”
The school will be ‘Covid-secure’, Mooncie said, but will need to offer blended learning in order to support students in case of further Covid restrictions.
“Through integrating art, design and creativity, pupils will learn how subjects relate to one another. For example, through clay modelling in the pottery art classes, the symmetry to physics is clearly demonstrated and when working on ceramics, the link to chemistry through firing in the kiln and the chemicals used to make the glazing is shown,” he added.
In March 2019, the school was rated Inadequate by Ofsted. A subsequent inspection in September 2019 concluded the school had met all of the independent school standards.
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