Wynstones School in Gloucester learned this week that it will not have to teach to some of the early learning goals for communication, language and literacy and ICT.
The school had applied for exemptions or modifications to goals that conflict with the Steiner Waldorf approach.
The school for children up to 18 has two kindergartens for three-to six-year-olds, which are funded by parents and do not receive local authority funding for the early years entitlement.
Because it is not funded by the local authority, the school had also applied for exemptions from the EYFS assessment process and from having to submit EYFS Profile data, but was not successful. Steiner has its own assessment process.
Trustee Dick Baker told Nursery World, 'Effectively, they have removed all the goals around reading and writing. We're very pleased about that.'
However, the school was not granted any exemptions from the problem solving, reasoning and numeracy goals because the 'statutory EYFS framework provides sufficient flexibility to incorporate the recognition of numerals'.
Mr Baker also said that it was not clear how the assessment process would work, because the school had been exempted from some goals but not from the assessment process.
The kindergarten at North London Rudolf Steiner School in Haringey, which receives local authority funding for the early years entitlement, has also been granted exemptions or modifications to some of the CLL goals and ICT.
Janni Nicol, early childhood representative for the Steiner Waldorf Schools Fellowship, said, 'I'm very pleased to see the Secretary of State has recognised the different educational approach that Steiner Waldorf schools take on the later introduction of formal literacy and numeracy, and that ICT and electronic gadgetry are not provided in Steiner.'
She said that 'almost all' Steiner schools and kindergartens are going through the exemption process, but there had been delays with some local authorities, which meant some schools were having to start the whole exemption process again for the next school year.
Ms Nichol said she would be collating the details of the exemptions from the DCSF to see what precedents had been set.
The DCSF confirmed that it has received 19 applications for exemptions. A spokesperson said, 'Each EYFS exemption application will be thoroughly considered on an individual basis depending on the evidence provided to demonstrate each case. As it is up to providers to decide to apply for EYFS exemptions, we are unable to determine how many applications we are likely to receive in the future.'
FURTHER INFORMATION
Details of the exemptions are at http://www.savesteinerschools.org