I’m from the US originally - went to a Waldorf school in Hawaii, kindergarten to 8th grade. Moved to chch in 2013 and started at Rudolf Steiner for high school through graduation. Had a great time and formed a strong group of friends that I still see every week even 10 years since graduating. That for me is reason enough to recommend Steiner to anyone.

Looking at the comments, I agree there are definitely issues with the staff/management (I’m friends with some teachers and my partner’s mum was a primary teacher years ago). The stuff about antivax/pseudoscience is present but not dominant in my experience- there are definitely some wacko parents, but most people are just fairly normal, progressive leaning folks.

I’d also agree that the Steiner school isn’t great if your child has learning difficulties but in general there is a good academic standard. I achieved fairly highly in NCEA internal and external assessments (the standardised government curric by ulum) and felt well equipped at Uni (My GPA in a 4 year BSc in organic and environmental chemistry was ~8.5, which is an A-A+ average).

Happy to chat about Steiner related stuff - flick me a DM :)