Parents sacrifice holidays for school

Press, 3 February 1982, Page 1

Parents sacrifice holidays for school

Many parents gave up their holidays so the Christchurch Rudolf Steiner School could open on its new site in Opawa yesterday. The new school in Ombersley Terrace consists of several renovated prefabricated classrooms bought by tender from the Education Department. The cost has been kept to

about $200,000 by using the old buildings and parents’ volunteer labour. “We have only spent half as much as we would have by using conventional building methods,” said one of the teachers, Mr John Allison. The school’s teaching methods are based on the child development .theories

of Rudolf Steiner, an AustroHungarian educationist. “The essence of it is that we are concerned with the total development of the child at any particular age,” said Mr Allison. Children of seven are thught differently from children of five. Children are not taught to read until they are about seven, and conven-

tiorial academic learning does not start until secondary school.

The school started in Christchurch m 1976 in rented room? at Spreydon with two teachers and two children..

Three years later the school moved to the old St Margaret’s School buildings in Springfield Road with 114

pupils divided into a kindergarten and primary school.

"Soon after that we had 200 pupils and we realised we needed our own site,” said Mr Allison. The new site has a kindergarten and primary school and the teachers (there is no headmaster, or teaching hierarchy) hope to build a secondary school eventually.

Mr Allison said there was a waiting list for places at the school. Parents have to pay an average of $3OO a

year to send their children there.

During the last two months teams of up to 20 parents had worked hard to ensure that the school was finished. Some gave up their annual holidays to help.