Steiner, NAPLAN and student withdrawals

I’m pleased to hear that ALL students in classes 3, 5, 7 and 9 in Victoria’s largest and oldest Steiner school have been withdrawn by their parents from having had to participate in NAPLAN tests. One would expect that all students in ALL Steiner schools and Steiner-inspired ‘streams’ in State schools would similarly be withdrawn, but I doubt this is the case, based on past discussions with a number of parents and teachers in various schools.

Perhaps I should here simply note Steiner’s statement made in the context of the independence of education from the State and standardised tests:

It is neither for the state nor the economic life to say: We need someone of this sort for a particular post; therefore test the people that we need and pay heed above all that they know and can do what we want. Rather, the spiritual-cultural organ of the social organism should, following the dictates of its own independent administration, bring those who are suitably gifted to a certain level of cultivation, and the state and economic life should organize themselves in accordance with the results of work in the spiritual-cultural sphere.

Steiner ‘The Threefold Social Order and Educational Freedom’

For a little more on Steiner and education, see my Steiner and Education page.