Exeter Steiner School is situated in what was formerly a family centre in the St Thomas district of Exeter. The school has evolved from having a long-standing early years provision on the current and a previous site. The school was then registered in September 2008 to admit five-to-12-year-olds and so is now registered for three-to12-year-olds. The school has 12 pupils of compulsory school age and 21 children aged three and four who are funded under the Nursery Scheme. There are very few pupils with a statement of special educational needs. As is usual with Steiner schools, the provision for children in the Early Years Foundation Stage is provided in the Kindergarten. ‘Parent and child’ groups meet at the school for several sessions each week. The pre-school children and the Nursery group were last inspected under Ofsted Early Years arrangements in January 2005. The school has a distinctive philosophy, following the Steiner Waldorf curriculum. The school is affiliated to the Steiner Fellowship, with an established Steiner school at Dartington acting as its support partner. It follows a curriculum based on the educational philosophy of Rudolf Steiner and its governance is guided by Steiner principles. The school has no headteacher, but the parents’ first point of contact is through the administrator. The planning group, with members drawn from parents and trustees, is responsible for the day-to-day management of the school. The ‘college of teachers’ deals with the curriculum and matters of pedagogy. The school is further characterised by its mission statement: ‘Education is a journey and not a race.’ Context of the visit At the time of the school’s pre-registration visit, there were some regulatory failings that the school then sought to address through its action plan, submitted in March 2008. The school’s first full inspection was in December 2009 when a number of failures to meet regulations were identified. These relate to pupils’ spiritual, moral, social and cultural development, pupils’ welfare, health and safety, the quality of the information provided to parents and checks on the suitability of the proprietor and staff. The school’s subsequent action plan to address these failures was accepted on 3 March 2010. This is the school’s first monitoring visit since the last inspection to check on the progress the school has made in implementing the action plan.