Norwich Initiative Steiner School
The Daily Mail - Neil Sears
21st of July 2011
Assault on six-year-old girl may cost fashionable Steiner school £100,000
An ‘alternative’ private school is facing a £100,000 compensation bill after ignoring a whistle-blowing teacher’s complaint that her daughter had been assaulted.
Jo Sawfoot, 42, worked at the fashionable Steiner school – where exams are considered harmful and pupils learn through gardening and playing with wooden blocks.
Her six-year-old daughter was also a pupil at the school.
Miss Sawfoot, a Cambridge graduate and the school’s designated child protection officer, claimed that bosses failed to investigate when she reported that her child had been assaulted by another teacher, Anna Letts.
Instead, she told an employment tribunal, the school misled social services by falsely claiming the girl had to be restrained after biting a staff member.
Miss Sawfoot claimed she was regarded as an ‘irritant’ at the school, giving her no option other than to resign and educate her child elsewhere. Parents protested in support of Miss Sawfoot, saying she had been bullied – and now her complaint of constructive dismissal has been upheld.
The Norwich tribunal ruled her daughter was ‘inappropriately restrained’ by Miss Letts and that Miss Sawfoot was mistreated by the school after she complained. She is now expected to receive damages of up to £100,000 for loss of earnings and injury to feelings.
Miss Sawfoot had 14 years’ teaching experience when she joined the Norfolk Initiative Steiner School kindergarten, where pupil fees are £5,300-a-year, in August 2007, two years after the school was founded.
In May 2009 she complained that Miss Letts had grabbed her daughter by the arm after the child had refused to move. The child was left in pain by the ‘assault’, but the school failed to investigate – even though its policy stated that teachers should use physical restraint only as a last resort.
And the next month, when school administrator Sandie Tolhurst reported the incident to social services, she claimed the girl was restrained for biting Miss Letts – whereas Miss Sawfoot claimed her daughter bit the teacher because she was being held.
Miss Tolhurst also cast doubt on Miss Sawfoot’s professionalism, saying she had been shouting in her classroom – and another teacher told a parent at the summer fete the school would be ‘better off without Jo’. Miss Sawfoot responded by resigning, withdrawing her daughter from the school and launching her tribunal claim.
Employment Judge John Warren criticised the school for its ‘failure to investigate her grievance, and misrepresentations to social services’.
He went on: ‘We are satisfied this difficult and obstructive line taken by the school is because they have come to regard Miss Sawfoot as an irritant because of the complaint.’
Speaking after the judgment, Miss Sawfoot said: ‘I am still passionately committed to the Steiner movement.
‘But my grievance was swept under the carpet by the school. Instead, I was subjected to a hostile working environment. They labelled me a bad parent and then a bad teacher.’
Steiner schools are based on the philosophy of Rudolph Steiner, who founded the first in Germany in 1919. There are now more than 900 worldwide. The school said: ‘It is a long and complicated assessment and we will continue to consider it in detail.’
A FASHIONABLE ALTERNATIVE EDUCATION
Steiner schools are inspired by the ideas of Austrian philosopher and playwright Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925) who believed children’s creativity, spirituality and morality need as much development as their intellect.
‘Education is a journey, not a race’ according to Steiner, who aimed to provide ‘education for the head, heart and hands’
Steiner was personally denounced by Adolf Hitler who called for right-wingers to declare ‘war against Steiner’
The first school launched by Steiner, in Stuttgart, Germany, was for the offspring of employees at a cigarette factory.
The 1,000 Steiner schools worldwide, including the 35 in Britain, encourage informality, and believe there is no hurry to learn to read – often waiting until youngsters are aged seven to start
Television is strongly discouraged, with many parents of Steiner pupils not even having a TV at home
Critics say Steiner schools are places ‘where children do what they like’.
Enthusiasts say they are places ‘where children like what they do’
In 2008 the Steiner Academy in Hereford became the first Steiner school to be funded by the state – meaning that unlike others, it is free to attend.
