In 2025, after 25 years of incredible work at Kindlehill Steiner School, our leadership team gathered to discuss and redefine our school Vision and Mission statement.

Taking in the work of the previous 25 years, our values and unique way of working, we created a simple guiding statement.

Families are at the heart of Kindlehill Steiner School. Parent participation warms and enriches school life — in classrooms, at fairs and festivals, through working bees and craft groups.

Many of our classroom furnishings were handcrafted by parents using beautiful and recycled timbers. Our community contributes skills, creativity and care — whether through maintaining the grounds, supporting events, or producing handmade items to raise funds for the school.

Kindlehill Steiner School parents and carers are an integral part of the functioning of the school. We offer many opportunities for parent and carer involvement including attending primary school excursions and camps, cooking meals, making costumes for plays, organising events and participating at the events. By becoming part of the school, by being visible and active in your child's school life, this fosters a sense of integration and seamlessness between home and school life enabling children to see the symbiosis in values of parents, carers and educators supporting each other in raising the next generation.

Kindlings, our seasonal publication, offers a glimpse into the richness of life at Kindlehill Steiner School and welcomes contributions from parents and students.

Our campus reflects our values. Creativity, community and love have shaped every building and garden space.

The grounds, buildings and spaces reflect and support the teachings of Steiner's core principles in form and function.

Our Kindergarten building unfolds in a spiral form, echoing the developmental journey of the child. This architectural gesture continues through the Primary classrooms and into the High School, where learning widens toward independence and engagement with the world.

Specialist facilities include:

Our Performance Space — built through the dedication of skilled craftspeople, volunteers and international helpers — hosts plays, concerts, movement classes and whole school gatherings.

Many of the kindy and primary school classrooms have a sink and a stove which allows us to be able to make things like bread as part of our lessons. There's nothing like the taste of a freshly baked pizza to help with a maths lesson on fractions.

The rhythm of the seasons shapes school life. Festivals, curriculum themes and practical activities reflect our local environment and foster a lived understanding of interconnection.

Students garden, cook and care for animals including chooks and guinea pigs. Our rooftop garden supplies fresh produce for classes. Each year, the whole school participates in creating a biodynamic compost from locally gathered leaves — which nourishes our gardens in spring.

Through these experiences, sustainability is not an abstract concept but a daily practice.

From our beginnings as a small parent-led initiative to the vibrant school we are today, Kindlehill Steiner School continues to grow thoughtfully and intentionally.

Kindlehill Steiner School is a social deed. Our purpose is to educate children and young people to be powerfully equipped in becoming individuals who contribute to creating a more compassionate and fair society for all.

We remain dedicated to providing an education that nurtures imagination, critical thinking, practical skills and a deep sense of belonging — preparing young people not only for further study, but for meaningful participation in the world.

Our teaching is inspired by an understanding of the human being, ideally including all the stages of individual life development and human evolution; and informed by the pedagogical indications given by Rudolf Steiner and applied in a regional and contemporary setting.

We strive to bring a life imbued education to every child and young person in our care, and to acknowledge the gift that each individual brings as part of a diverse and respectful community.

Cultivating the imagination, a sense of beauty and the awakening of artistic feeling across the fields of human endeavour (including the arts), we support children and young people to become creative and resourceful for their lives and the lives of others. As the High School years unfold, added to this development of artistic imagination is the fostering of the young person’s efforts towards making active thinking their own, and to developing powers of sound judgment by which they are able to authentically discern whether something is true or not.

Kindlehill seeks an alignment of values between home and school. Teachers, parents and students are a vibrant community, that supports the flourishing of children and young people – and in doing so, contributes to what is good for all humanity.

We support a culture of “growth” in which all members of the community see themselves as active, developing and evolving human beings.

In celebrating together, listening to and respecting each other, and in cooperating and supporting each other; we model for our children and young people, a society based on cooperation, respect and empowerment.

We strive to uphold the imperative of justice and equity for Aboriginal people. We acknowledge the traditional owners whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land.

We support children and young people in developing a relationship to nature that engenders freedom, nourishes well-being and cultivates respectful interconnectedness as they live their lives.

We acknowledge the inter-relationship between the personal, social, environmental and spiritual dimensions to life. We value the integration of respectful, sustainable, celebratory and fair actions in every dimension of our lives, for the good of our planetary being – now and into the future.

Kindlehill Steiner School is situated on Dharug and Gundungurra land. We pay our respects to the traditional custodians of this land, to the Dharug and Gundungurra peoples, whose cultures and customs have nurtured and continue to nurture this land. We pay our respects to elders past and present. We recognise the strength, capacity and resilience of all past and present Aboriginal people in this region.

We acknowledge the spirit that resides in and flows through this land, the elemental and spiritual beings who cohabit this place.

Kindlehill Steiner School has been awarded a Gold Rating by Low Carbon Living Blue Mountains and recognised for embedding a low-carbon ethos into both our buildings and our educational practices.

Our sustainability initiatives include:
• Use of low-embodied and recycled materials in construction
• Extensive reuse and recycling practices
• Onsite edible production
• Solar energy generation
• Electricity supplied through a carbon-neutral provider
• Class projects that embed sustainability ethos and practices across the School

We are committed to reducing our environmental footprint while educating students to become thoughtful stewards of the Earth.

Kindlehill Steiner School has a collaboratively designed Statement – Learning and living together with Climate Change – which is our guiding narrative for how we address climate change.

Cost savings

Relationships are the heart of Kindlehill Steiner School, where everyone belongs, is seen and valued for who they are; and feel themselves part of something bigger than themselves.

It is an education kindled in spirit, steeped in wisdom, cultivating imagination, courage, compassion, and ways to live that contribute to a more just and balanced world. We also develop in our students the capacity to put a shoulder to the wheel for that which they deem important and in ways where their abilities and gifts are foremost.

Our School is embedded in an incredibly significant World Heritage Environment, where we live together with waterways, forests, birds and critters. Throughout their education we want our children and young people to feel the beauty and uniqueness of this place, and to honour Dharug and Gundungurra Country as teacher, joining together and learning with First Peoples, and the broader Blue Mountains community, in restorative and celebratory actions and ways of living.

Our teaching is also informed by a contemporary and evolving understanding of Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical indications for the unfolding life of the whole human being. In Kindy, play based learning is core, as are the values of respect, generosity, kindness and resilience which are woven into every story, song and guided activity.

In the Primary School, academic work is interwoven with experiential, artistic and imaginative learning, which inspires and strengthens the feeling life of the child. The High School years develop knowledge and skills in ways where relevance and meaning are explicit. Additionally, they develop aesthetic and ethical discernment, which informs resourceful and purposeful participation in the world.

In the senior years, young people address the complex mindsets and systems that are part of our world today. They develop critical and innovative thinking that inspires them to live their lives with a deeply felt sense of the underlying inter-relatedness of life. They apply classroom learning through engagement in significant projects that address real life problems in our local community.

Kindlehill provides an immersive education infused with kindness, creativity, celebration and love. We strive for the rich unfolding of each child and young person’s potential. We do this in a way that cultivates lives lived in service to the wellbeing of people and planet.

Kindlehill Steiner School is a social deed.

Kindlehill Steiner School stands on Dharug and Gundungurra land.
We pay our deep respects to the Traditional Custodians of this land, to Elders past and present, and to the enduring strength and cultural wisdom of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

We are committed to strengthening our connection with local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, including through cultural exchange, artistic collaboration and education.

Kindlehill offers Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Scholarships in the spirit of enriching the educational experience of all students. Scholarships are offered annually, subject to available places.

Kindlehill Steiner School’s totem is Petula gigantea, the giant dragonfly. It is our teacher in the interconnectedness of all life and in caring for Country.