Waldorf School McGregor

McGregor is a village 200 km North East of Cape Town and has around 1.800 inhabitants (1600 coloured, 240 black and beside this 350 white people staying mostly not the whole year). The around 180 children of the Waldorf school are mixed like this. Most of them live in the townships and communities nearby. Their families have less than 100 Euro per month to live with.

1972 the Apartheid finally reached the village McGregor, where black and white people still had lived together until then. Now the separation of living areas and the alienation began, lasting for 20 years. 1991 initiatives aimed for the offset of this separation. The founders of the McGregor Waldorf school played a central role in many of these initiatives - and this happened quite a long time before the historical change of 1994.

Briar Pastoll was a teacher for mathematics and biology with 9 years of experience in state school. 1987 she visited a Waldorf school und then the village of McGregor, which she immediately recognised as the suitable place for founding a Waldorf school. 1990 she began a Waldorf training and 1994 - after four years of preparation - she founded the Waldorf school together with two colleagues. The school was meant as first institutions of a more holistic planned „Whole Life Education Centre“ (WLEC).

The school started with help of a donation of 10.000 Rand and with 17 children in grades 1-6. The first two years Briar and her colleagues got a monthly salary of 500-600 R. In September 1995 they designed a serious budget - which showed an enormous deficit. But only a few days later a woman from England visited the school and offered to buy a house, to support 10 children and to cover all running costs for the following five years!

1999 the initiative could buy a Toyota mini-bus (with help of a 21.000 DM donation of the German state Baden-Württemberg, through the Friends of Waldorf Education) to enable the school visit for 16 more pupils from the surrounding farms. During the next months the number of pupils grew from 49 to 73 children, and soon the bus toured twice a day.

In July 2000 the school already hat 96 children (playgroup 12, kindergarten 20, grades 1-9 64). Now the school had afterschool care, cultural activites for all children of the village, a teacher training program and first plans for a college and a business training centre.

At the end of 2001 Briar Pastoll left the school after seven years and went to Cape Town, where her son was going to a Waldorf Upper School and she had to care for her old mother.

Since 2003 the school has more than 100 children. In this year the first class 12 got their diploma.

A day in the Waldorf school

Entering a Playgroup or Kindergarten class is always an intimate experience. Almost at once a tiny hand slips into yours and a little girl leads you confidently to stand beside her in the circle of about 15 children.  And in no time at all, you’re singing and clapping as happily as a six-year-old, watching the Spring Fairy dance around the circle checking to see if the seeds are ready to be released from the grip of King Winter. 

Every Monday morning, all the children from the Primary School gather for the assembly. The children say a blessing for Africa and her children, then listen raptly as one of their teachers tells them a story. The story speaks to their imagination and sets the tone for learning to take place in the week to come.
Some senior learners, who are part of a group of seniors carrying out maintenance duties around the High School, are busy moving into their new buildings, which are situated more up in the village, bordering a nature reserve.

It is just another day at the McGregor Waldorf School in this sleepy village in the Breede River Valley where children learn to be creatively responsible and to think independently.

The McGregor Waldorf School, initiated in 1994, the year democracy started in South Africa, is not a rich private school but a school that caters specifically for a broad range of children from all number of economic, social, cultural and language backgrounds. 163 learners attend the school - from Playgroup up to High school.

The majority of the learners come from poor, black African speaking and coloured Afrikaans speaking families of which 90% earn less than R 1,000 or 100 Euro a month. Most families pay only a fraction of the school fees, which are between 15% and 50% of the actual cost per child.

The children live in townships or communities surrounded by many serious problems: poverty, unemployment, violence, drugs, alcohol abuse, sexual, physical and emotional abuse, teenage pregnancies, gangsterism, undernourishment and noise.  The stress this causes the children makes learning more complex - and a lot of our learners face challenges such as Dyslexia, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome, Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity, difficulties with reading, writing and mathematics, emotional and social behavioural problems. The Western Cape, of which McGregor forms part, has the highest incidence of Fetal Alcohol syndrome in the world.

The McGregor Waldorf School provides a safe space in which dedicated teachers cherish the children. Children who receive affection and support in early childhood have a good foundation for coping with challenges, overcoming disadvantages and making positive contributions to society. Out of a feeling of self-worth they can grow into independent adults, realising their potential to the fullest.

Practical learning

In South Africa 75% of matriculates are unemployed. They lack the experience or skills to be practically employed. In the McGregor Waldorf High School academic subjects like mathematics are available as extras, but the emphasis is on practical subjects such as business economics, computer science, drama, craft and art. The acquisition of practical experience happens through participation in maintenance duties, working in the school’s vegetable garden and involvement in the running of small businesses.

One example of such a business is the hairdressing salon, which is the initiative of some senior girls. The salon provides a service to the community, enables the girls to earn some money for themselves and acquire the experience to be practically employed in a hairdressing salon.

Other businesses were started with the same goal in mind: a bookbinding business, which is making profits and employs a previously unemployed parent, the production of wooden benches and chairs, a smithy which produces metalwork, the production and selling of pizzas baked in a clay oven and the making of clothes out of stretch materials.

The Kindergarten and Primary school occupy the school buildings in the centre of the village, which allows most local children to walk to school. The children living in Nquebela and Zolani townships are fetched each morning with our minibus and our 40 seater second hand bus.

The High School and hostel occupy since January 2007 the ‘Kampterrein’, as it is known in the village.  The school rents the whole property on which there are several buildings, a swimming pool and ample land for sports activities. Situated next to a nature reserve, big sunny classrooms and lots of space makes this the ideal setting for a High School. It is therefore the strong intention of the school to buy the property. 

Katleen Verschoore