MADAM - It was reported recently that the Steiner free school initiative group have made it through to the interview stage.

It was also reported that Gloucestershire schools have been achieving very well in literacy and numeracy standards.

They are “punching above their weight”.

Local education officials are rightly proud of this level of achievement in our local schools.

If the Steiner free school bid is approved Stroud will be saddled with a large school where enforced delayed reading is the norm; children are denied books and writing until their baby teeth have fallen out and their “etheric body” can incarnate properly.

Exemptions have been negotiated by the Steiner movement so that children do not need to reach standards required for other children in literacy and numeracy; inspections are changed to accommodate these preferences.

Standards in the area will drop; claims that children “catch up” with their peers later are sadly not true.

Some children are taken out of Steiner schools and teachers in other schools are asked to help.

Basically, millions of pounds will be spent on a school where teachers are paid not to teach literacy and numeracy, but to concern themselves with spiritual matters relating to the mystic ideas of an Austrian “clairvoyant”.

This may appeal to a few anthroposophy enthusiasts, but is it what we really want in our town?

H Saunders

Bowbridge