Perth Waldorf School
Welcome to Perth Waldorf School
Perth Waldorf School provides a complete Steiner Education for children from Kindergarten to Year 12.
Our architecturally designed mud brick and red cedar classrooms are placed on a pristine bush block located near beautiful Bibra Lake, 10 minutes to Fremantle and 20 minutes from the Perth CBD.
In 2022, the new Parkerville High School Campus opens - set in natural bushland in the heart of the Perth Hills. Parkerville is 50 minutes’ drive from the Perth CBD and 15 minutes away from Midland.
The curriculum is a culturally rich, integrated and artistic approach to the education of the child.
The primary aim is the provision of high quality education based on the insights of Rudolf Steiner.
About Steiner Education
Each Waldorf School, while sharing a common philosophical base and methodology with other Waldorf schools, has a unique character.
In the broadest sense, Waldorf education aims to:
- Awaken and preserve the child's innate sense of wonder, awe and reverence for life.
- Restore vitality to childhood by infusing the learning process with love and enthusiasm.
- Cultivate the child's capacity for clear thinking.
The school's objective is to:
Help each child blossom into young adulthood with a balanced capacity for both feeling and thinking, so that they are prepared, with self confidence and inner resources to accept responsibility and take their places as creative, self-directed members of society.
Academic program
The Waldorf School curriculum has been developed and refined over the past 80 years and is designed as a unity. Its subjects are introduced and developed in a sequence that mirrors the inner development of the pupil as they grow. Incoming students at every grade level easily adjust to the natural progression of the curriculum.
The school does not seek any specific type of student; a broad spectrum of styles and abilities within each class is essential for creating a healthy environment. Our students all acquire knowledge and information in a broad, rich and stimulating curriculum approved by the Federal and State Government Departments.
Early Childhood & Kindergarten
The atmosphere of Waldorf Playgroups is warm, gentle and enfolding. The children are surrounded by calming pastel colours and natural materials, such as hand-made dolls, wooden toys and blocks, silk scarves, gumnuts and shells. This encourages creative and imaginative play and develops a sensitivity to and respect for nature. Other activities further enhance this, such as cooking, gardening and painting.
The Kindergarten caters for 4, 5 and 6 year olds in an environment that allows the children to learn through imitation and with activities that highlight the creative and skilful, truth and beauty.
The Kindergarten teacher sees the Kindy as a place where children can develop and grow in strength through stable rhythm and routine before meeting the intellectual, technological and material challenges of the later years.
Primary Years
Following on from Kindergarten, the children embark on a journey with their class teacher who, where possible, accompanies them throughout their Primary years.
Waldorf schools strive to make each day an organic whole. Just as the unfolding of the person goes through different stages, so too does their day go through the same processes. As well as having content, the curriculum itself has a rhythmic pattern and balance which enhances learning rather than fragmenting it.
The school day is therefore divided into three parts:
1. Main Lesson in the morning;
2. A practice or artistic lesson in the middle period which includes music, languages, painting and drama;
3. Craft and practical activities lesson in the afternoon which may include handwork, bush walks or games/sport.
High School
During the Primary school years, feeling is the emerging soul faculty for the child. In the High School the curriculum is designed to meet the development of the third soul faculty thinking. The capacity for pure abstract thinking emerges and can be approached directly. Students are led to develop independent and creative thinking based on the formation of independent judgement. Teachers in Waldorf High Schools also consciously nurture the idealism and individuality emerging in the adolescent.
Students graduate having completed internal assessments and the Class 12 Project which integrates all of what they have learned during their school journey. Many graduates have entered higher education and do a range of courses through a unique early access to the STAT test and their portfolio of work.