By Charlene Gatt and Alesha Capone
PARENTS’ hopes of a Steiner stream being reinstated at Footscray City Primary School, after an eleventh-hour review by the State Education Minister, have been dashed.
Mr Dixon had ordered an independent review of the decision, made by the Western Metropolitan Region of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development, to axe the Steiner stream, replace the principal without notice and sack parents on the school council.
However, the Education Minister’s last-minute review did not give many parents the result they were hoping for.
In a letter to parents, a “delegate” of the Education Minister, deputy secretary Chris Wardlaw, wrote it was “appropriate” to terminate the school council, apart from the principal, and appoint new members.
“I do not consider the current school council membership (except for the principal) with its concerns about the cessation of Steiner and the school’s transition to the mainstream, to be best suited to oversee the major changes and direction that the school will take from 2012,” his letter said.
Under the Steiner stream, children are not taught to read and write until they are seven and are discouraged from using computers and watching TV.
Last week, Save Footscray City Primary School spokesman and former school council president Tim Sharkey said “the school community is overwhelmingly outraged” at the decision.
Two mainstream and two Steiner parents met with Education Minister Martin Dixon last week to find out why the Steiner stream had been axed from the school.
With only four weeks left of the school year, some parents have applied to move their children to other schools, with Collingwood College the closest school offering the Steiner program.
Mr Sharkey said the Education Department and the Education Minister needed to guarantee parents, who wished to send their children to the Collingwood school, they would all receive a place.
“There have been no assurances by the Department that the children who apply for a spot at Collingwood will get one,” he said.
Mr Sharkey said the decision to axe Footscray City Primary School’s Steiner program would leave the West as the only part of Melbourne without a Steiner school.
Star contacted the Department of Education but did not receive a response before deadline, and the Education Minister’s office declined to comment.
