looking back during the summer holidays on an eventful year
2008 - 2009

"May you live in interesting times" is a proverbial Chinese curse: you're more likely to die peacefully of old age in boring times. Fortunately we still seem to be living in uninteresting times nationally and — from our British insular point of view — internationally.

For the school however the last year has been Quite Interesting. We started the 2008-2009 academic year with continuing uncertainty about whether Steiner kindergarten education could survive the Learning and Development requirements of the government's Early Years Foundation Scheme (EYFS) which would have required us to meet government-imposed targets for literacy and numeracy achievements in children below the age of compulsory education and in "settings" (such as our kindergartens) receiving not a penny of state funding. We had campaigned vigorously against the EYFS earlier in 2008; writing to MPs, news media etc, and a couple of our parents even lobbying civil servants arriving for work at the Department for Children Schools and Families (DCSF). During the Autumn term the campaign reached the point of threatening the DCSF with a Judicial Review: an initiative of Wynstones' campaigners but made possible by the courage of an Alder Bridge family who volunteered to be the guinea-pigs to nominally bring the case. Whether the threat of such action did the trick is unclear but an accomodation with the government seems to have been reached, for Steiner 'settings' at least.

And not a moment too soon: before the end of the year we found ourself in the depths of financial crisis, with the school having to sack staff, cut salaries for those remaining and ask parents for more money for the education of our children.

And here's another proverb: "every cloud has a silver lining". At our Emergency General Meeting in December many people expressed their anger, bewilderment and distress at the situation we found ourselves in, but the crisis undoubtedly focussed our attention on the financial problems which had been building up over the years and got us thinking, talking and moving on ways to tackle them in the longer term as well as more immediately. In the short term the response of the parents' community in mobilising to agree to voluntarily but universally donate the equivalent of the fee increase which would otherwise have been necessary, in order that the school could claim gift-aid tax refunds on the money, was remarkable. It will be an interesting and useful measure of the solidarity of our community to learn how completely we meet the agreed target by the new academic year.

We also came out of the EGM with a resource we'd never enjoyed before but for which the time was surely right: our community email list. Our own EYFS mailing list had shown us how useful such a tool could be, and years of lousy communication in which only a handful of members of the community had any real interchange (through official meetings, at the school gates or through personal friendships) but in which most people received only one-way communication via the school newsletter and were otherwise more-or-less in the dark, had shown us what a need there was for such a resource. Much kudos to John Dawson for setting up the list, along with others he'd previously and has subsequently set up, and for quietly tweaking the infrastructure of these lists to make them more effective for users (along with the 1001 other IT and other things he does for the school).

In the first few days and weeks of its existence the list proved its value by facilitating the rapid and wide-ranging discussion of the proposed voluntary gift-aid-able alternative to the fees increase. It also allowed us to follow up discussions begun at the EGM on how to set the school on a sound and sturdy path for the future. Into these discussions Graham's email setting out his view of the situation he saw the school in, some of the choices we could make and a process by which we could move onward, seemed to crystallise what many of us had been trying to formulate. From that point it seemed as if we had a map, and the focus of our activities shifted to preparing to set out on our journey.

During the first half of 2009 the community development project worked hard to try to bring together what at times seemed like an impossible combination: a facilitator with empathy for, and experience of, working with Steiner schools (ideally in a position such as ours), who was available at dates when most members of the community and most teachers and members of staff could potentially attend. A difficult enough task in itself given that potential facilitators had vastly different CVs and ways of working, let alone availability (and costs), not to mention that the one we chose seemed to have an ever-changing diary and eventually was unable to work with us at all due to personal circumstances. The gods must have been smiling on us that Jeff Olson, who has been quietly mentoring the school for some time, allowed us to twist his arm into facilitating the eventual 2-day workshop and did so in a way that most attending surely appreciated as being empathetic and effective.

The financial problem underlying the school's crisis translates directly into numbers of children in the school via fee income so the task of attracting and retaining children (and their parents) is almost as vital as actually providing a Steiner education. During 2009 various groups have been working on arranging open days, running stalls at public events, revising the school's prospectus and (potentially) redesigning the website, which should eventually bear fruit in terms of attracting sufficient children not just to secure the prosperity of the school but to allow us to grow as we would like. In the meantime the vital task of converting enquiries from interested parents into new pupils in the school, via arranging visits, answering would-be parents' questions and so on, has owed much to one of our number in particular who has the valuable combination of experience as a state school as well as Steiner teacher, not to mention her sheer hard work and dedication.

And of course the teachers and other staff generally have been having to work even harder for even less monetary reward but have nevertheless managed to acheive minor miracles in the quality of the education and other aspects of the school for which they are responsible.

Outside the school itself our community seems to have developed strengths and vibrancy over the last year. Last December's Winter Bash at Aldermaston village hall introduced us to some of the musical talent present in the school community, which was confirmed at Trish and Frank's joyful summer party (practically a school community event in itself, these days) and at the brilliant benefit gig at the Rising Sun a week later.

For our children there have been the Wild Wood (aka Wayne's World!) Adventures. I'm disappointed that I only got to one 'proper' one of these events.

The new academic year will no doubt bring new changes, challenges and, we hope, delights. We have a new class, and a new classroom, in Bridge House.

We have had a class in this room before (my older son's class was there several years ago) but now, presumably to comply with regulations and keep on the right side of OFSTED, we must have new WCs for the children to use. One parent-trustee has been quietly beavering away converting the laundry room into loos as well as a changing room for special needs children. This has involved reinstalling the big washing machine into the kitchen (which itself involved reinstalling one of the cookers elsewhere in the kitchen), plumbing waste pipes from the WCs into the drains and re-arranging hot and cold water supplies, building walls, hanging doors, installing lavatory pans and cisterns, washbasins and taps, tiling, rewiring and so on - all in all a reasonable-sized project for a full-time builder but a pretty heroic project for a lone DIY-er with work, parental and other commitments to undertake in a very limited timescale (not to mention refurbishing the old loo at the back of the building to boot!). He has had a little help from the school's tame plumber but seemed quite prepared to take on the whole project himself if need be.

School Development

There is perhaps a danger when things aren't at crisis point of leaving them be. Most of us have got plenty of other things - work, family, relationships etc - to spend our time and energy on. However we all generally accept that the fabric of our school needs continuing attention and many of us contribute our time and energy in work days to maintain and improve the physical structure of the school. Maybe we need to adopt the same attitude to the less-tangible aspects of the school: maintenance of relationships between parents, teachers and other members of the community, and organising ourselves to decide how we want the school to be and make it happen. Fewer than half the members of the school attended the community development workshop in June: some, perhaps, didn't want to, but others were unable to do so for various reasons, and with a new year and new children joining the school we have new parents joining our community. The email list may give them clues as to what's going on in the community but it must be like coming late into an established conversation. I am not the only one who has suggested or supported the idea of regular community development workshops (e.g. one day from say 10am - 3pm, once every term) giving us the opportunity to share our appreciations, information, problems and wishes for our school and community and keep up the momentum of developing the school we really want and need for our children and those following them.

Lastly, I'm sure I'm not the only one looking forward to the next Manband gig, and to hearing Sophie's piano, Marcus and Cathy and who knows what other talents our community holds!

John Stumbles, August 2009

PS in the earlier days of the World-Wide-Web it used to be almost a cliche that evey other web page had to have an "Under Construction" disclaimer. It would be quite appropriate for this page: there is much extra I would like to have written about: Christchurch Gardens Kindergarten (practically the birthplace and certainly first home to the then Reading Steiner School Project, which became Alder Bridge Association, which was sold at the end of the 2007-8 academic year to St Luke's trust), other behind-the-scenes work happening over the summer holiday such as the reorganisation of the main office and the Chamber of Secrets upstairs, the Spades in the Ground project.... And I think we might have acknowledged some of the personal events affecting the lives of some members of our community - bereavement, serious illnesses, breakdowns of relationships, and difficulties some of our children had - as well as new babies and other happy changes. There must be much more I could have written about but by the time I'd thought of everything we'd probably have been looking back at the 2009-2010 year!

Please email me directly with comments, corrections etc on what I have written, or perhaps share your thoughts with others on the community email list (if you are subscribed to it - and if not why not?!)