Steiner Waldorf education began more than a hundred years ago and is now found in thousands of schools around the world. The central idea is that subjects are brought to children according to the stage of development they are going through, through experience, through doing and through art - not through books alone. Here we answer the questions parents actually ask.

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Why teach in main lesson blocks rather than a bit of everything every day?

Every morning, for the first hours of the day, the class works on a single main subject - Italian, mathematics, history or science, for instance - and stays with that subject for several weeks before moving on. This way children really get inside a topic: they have time to become absorbed in it and to let it settle, instead of chasing six or more subjects in a single week. Subjects that need constant practice - languages, music, physical activity - come back regularly every week instead.

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Why do children write by hand first and read later?

In the early years children come to letters through drawing and pictures: a letter grows out of an image, out of a story, out of a movement of the hand. First they learn to form and write the letters, and then, quite naturally, they come to read what they have written. It is a path that begins in concrete experience and in the movement of the hand and arrives at abstraction, rather than starting from the abstract sign. Each child illustrates and writes their own main lesson books, built up in class step by step.

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Why are there no marks? And how is a child's work assessed?

We don't use marks or rankings, so that learning doesn't turn into a race and children don't have to live with the anxiety of performing. That doesn't mean nothing is assessed: the class teacher observes each child's work and growth every day and, at the appropriate times, reports back to families with a careful account of progress, of strengths, and of what still needs work. Assessment is personal and descriptive - meant to help a child grow, not to label them.

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Why does the same teacher stay with the class for several years?

A class teacher accompanies the same class from Class 1 to Class 8. That continuity makes deep trust possible: the teacher knows each child's story, follows their changes, knows what puts them at ease and what they find difficult, and notices and nurtures what they are good at. Alongside the class teacher, specialist teachers work with the children in particular areas: languages, music, art, movement and handwork.