Limited places for September 2025 – Find out More.
Limited places for September 2025 – Find out More.
Admissions
Admissions
At Ringwood Waldorf School, we’re not just welcoming students — we’re embracing families. By joining us, you become part of a vibrant, thriving community that is at the heart of everything we do.
Our application process is simple and clearly outlined below. We offer two ways for you to get to know our school. For enrolment inquiries, please click the link below to book an initial telephone or Google Meet call with Kate Pursglove, our Admissions Officer.
Alternatively, if you’d like to visit us and learn more about our curriculum or what makes our school unique, we invite you to join one of our open mornings by clicking the link below.
We look forward to welcoming you to our school, where you’ll have the chance to explore our ethos and meet the class teacher(s), helping you decide if we’re the right fit for your family.
Please click on the link to arrange an initial Zoom or phone call with our Admissions Office. This is an opportunity to ask any questions you may have, find out more about our school and to check the availability of spaces in your child’s class.
Visit the School
We recommend a visit to our school and we can arrange a tour for you and your family during the initial call. During your visit, you will have the opportunity to tour the school grounds, see the classrooms, and if available, speak to the teachers.
Families are also encouraged to find out as much as possible about Waldorf education beforehand. To support this there are a few short films about Waldorf Education on our landing page of this website as well as more details on the curriculum page.
If you decide to apply for a place for your child, please contact admissions for an application form.
To submit the application, you will need to provide:
A copy of your child’s birth certificate.
A copy of your child’s latest/last school report
A copy of any reports from educational psychologists or SEN coordinators (if applicable)
Please note that we are unable to progress your application without these documents.
An admissions registration fee is also applicable for each application. £114 (£95 plus 20% VAT) for the first child and £60 (£50 plus 20% VAT) for each subsequent application for any siblings.
If the class is full, we will offer you a place on the waitlist for that class.
Once we have received your application, there may be the option of your child attending some taster days in the class. This is so that they can get a feel for the school and the education, as the rhythms and pace of the curriculum can seem quite different to other schools. Taster days are only offered from Class 1 and above.
The Admissions Office and relevant class teacher will advise you if this is appropriate for your child. Taster days are only offered when there is space available in the class.
If we are able to proceed with your application, the family will be invited for an interview at the school, normally within a month of their application or in the term before their ideal start date. This will also be after any taster days have taken place, if applicable.
This is an opportunity for us to get to know more about your child and your family, discuss your child’s development and educational journey so far, and for you to meet the class teacher. The teacher will also give you more specific details about the class and curriculum and answer any questions you may have.
This meeting will be with two teachers and takes approximately 1 hour. One teacher will interview the parents and one teacher will talk to the child.
Please note that being invited for an interview does not mean you will automatically be offered a place in the school.
If both the school and the family are in agreement, your child will be offered a place at the school. You will be sent an Admission Agreement to sign as acceptance of the place, and be required to pay a refundable family deposit.
Deposits are £700 for one child and £1000 for two or more children.
The first half term is a trial basis for both the family and the school so that the best outcomes all around can be achieved. This allows for flexibility if things do not work out as expected, although this is the exception.
Shortly before joining the school, we will introduce you to the Class Parents for the class(es) you are joining so that they can support you as you settle in, introduce you to other families, and warmly welcome your family into the school community.
You will also receive a copy of our Parents’ Handbook which will give you all the information you need ahead of joining the school, and we will subscribe you to the school’s internal weekly Newsletter so that you can start to get to know people and what is happening in school.
We have a wide ‘catchment’ area and many families move counties or countries to be able to attend the school. We can do a virtual visit and, if necessary, application interviews via zoom. If we can help ease your move, we will, so please just ask.
We are a community school which is funded almost entirely with the financial fee contributions of the families attending the school. This allows us to keep our independence and be able to offer the full Waldorf Curriculum right through the school to age 18.
For more information please visit our Finances Page
Living and studying overseas at a young age is a very rich and rewarding experience both for you and for your British classmates. You will be fully integrated into our own classes of native English speaking children and together you will follow the Waldorf curriculum used worldwide.
It is a great environment to improve your English at your own speed and to help you, we offer EFL (English as a Foreign Language) lessons to all non-native speaker students.
We offer a wide ranging curriculum including arts, crafts, drama, music, physical activities, maths, science, languages and much more! Classes are small (15-20 on average) and have a caring, intimate and friendly atmosphere.
We take applications all year round and help pupils join classes at the beginning of each term as well as at the beginning of each Main Lesson block, which starts every 3 weeks throughout the academic year.
Our view is usually ‘the sooner the better’ because it’s the small things we do every day that add up to a much bigger picture over time.
We do not have a limited catchment area and it is up to families to decide how far they wish to travel, although we would recommend living within an hour’s drive of the school.
We have families living as far north as Salisbury, as far east as Southampton, and as far west as Wareham and Dorchester.
There is a wide variety of locations to choose from including towns, villages, forest side or near the sea.
Many families choose to live locally so that they can cycle or walk to school.
There is also a school minibus service that operates from the school to Bournemouth, Westbourne, Southbourne, and Boscombe.
Please talk to Admissions if you would like some advice and further information on local areas.
The school operates on a Financial Contribution basis. As children progress through the school, the expected contributions increase along with the amount of time that children attend.
Younger children in Class 1 attend 5 mornings and have only one full day in school, whereas Class 2 have two full days in school. By the age of 11, children attend full time and the contributions for the older classes reflect this.
Our kindergartens are similarly costed for the number of mornings your child attends. Early Years Funding is also available until the term in which your child turns 5.
We aim to keep costs to a minimum and make Waldorf education as affordable and inclusive as possible.
Further information on how the school operates financially can be found on the ‘Financial Contribution’ link below.
Yes, of course we want whole families to join the school, so sibling discounts are applied.
Please see the ‘Financial Contributions’ link below for more details.
We are a community school which is funded almost entirely from the financial contributions of the families attending the school. This allows us to keep our independence and be able to offer a full Waldorf Curriculum right through the school to age 18. As such, we do not currently offer bursaries to new families joining the school and expect them to be able to meet the contributions or to have a demonstrable plan of their own in place as to how they intend to meet the contributions.
We are very much a community and you join the school as a family (it’s not just for your child!).
Parents/guardians are expected to help clean their classroom and support their class teacher all through the year in a variety of ways.
We also encourage parents to get involved and volunteer their time and skills beyond their child’s class in whichever ways they are able to and this can be very rewarding. We have a lot of parent-led groups which do wonderful work for the whole school all year around. This is part of joining the school.
However, as a charity with strict financial controls in place, we cannot exchange volunteer work for reductions in financial contributions.
We have a small SEN team which provides support for the whole school so our capacity to offer provision for special educational needs is limited.
Our class teachers are able to provide support for pupils with mild special educational needs as part of their day-to-day work with their whole class.
If your child requires specific SEN support, this will need to be discussed with Admissions before you make an application so that an assessment can be made on the school’s capacity to meet the child’s educational needs now and in the future.
Further details can be found in our Admissions Policy.
If your child has an EHCP, it is unlikely that funding would be transferred across to our school as our SEN provision has limited capacity. As such, we are usually not able to accommodate children with EHCPs.
Our 3 kindergartens have up to 16 children.
In the Lower School and Upper School we have one class for each year group and our maximum number of pupils in each class is 25.
Ringwood Waldorf School does not offer boarding at the school.
However, we work with a partner school (The Lewis School of English) who is able to assist families in finding host families for their child. However, this will depend on the age and needs of the child.
If we know what you are looking for as a family we can help point you in the right direction.
We are located in a diverse area, with plenty of choice from which to base yourselves. We are on the outskirts of the market town of Ringwood and around 20 – 25 minutes from the large seaside boroughs of Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole. Additionally, we are very close to a number of lovely small towns and villages within the the beautiful New Forest, Dorset and Hampshire countryside
Please let us know if you would further advice on the local area.
Once families have completed an application for their child, we are able to hold a place in the relevant class for a maximum of one term.
Held places are still subject to an Educational Interview and half-term trial (see Application Process).
Pupils with English as an additional language are warmly supported through a whole-school approach, ensuring they feel welcomed and are able to communicate effectively. If needed, extra English lessons with a specialist teacher are provided, alongside strategies like additional tuition, bilingual resources, and peer support, all designed to help them fully engage with the Waldorf curriculum. We carefully monitor each child’s progress, maintaining regular communication with parents, in a nurturing, inclusive environment that celebrates cultural diversity and fosters bilingualism.
We recognise that choosing a school is a big decision. We invite you to visit us and learn more about how a Waldorf education at Ringwood Waldorf School can benefit your child.
Address
Ringwood Waldorf School, Folly Farm Lane,
Ashley, Ringwood, Hampshire, BH24 2NN
Open Term Time
Monday – Friday
8.00 a.m. to 3.30 p.m.
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