State Subsidy

Contrary to the intentions of its founders, the Waldord school is viewed as a private school by the Luxembourgish State. As such, it falls under the Law of June 13, 2003 regulating the relationship between State and private schools (Link to PDF of law).

This law distinguishes between two categories of private schools: 1) the schools that teach the state programme and 2) the schools that do not teach the state programme. Schools in the 1^st category are subsidized at 90% of the costs incurred by the state for public school students while schools in the 2^nd category only receive 40% of the full amount.

Since the Waldorf school is seen not to follow the state programme, it falls into the second category. For each enroled student, it receives 40% of the amount that this student would have cost the State had he/she been enrolled in public school.

Infrastructure costs
The law also foresees that the State should subsidize 80% of all building and other infrastructure costs incurred by the school and pay a yearly maintenance subsidy for this infrastructure equal to 2% of the initial investment. The remaining 20% of all infrastructure costs are covered by a part of the parents' school fees and placed in a special building fund.

For our current buildings and infrastructure see (link to Our School- General- infrastructure)

Comments on the Law

In view of the recent reforms in State education and the creation of public schools with different programmes and pedagogical approaches, one can question the 90%-40% distinction set down by the Law of June 13, 2003.

This distinction raises the question of the fairness principle and even more so the one of equal opportunity in matters of education. It either leads to limiting the attendance of the second category of schools to the children of affluent families or to creating economic problems for those schools, such as the Waldorf school, that view themselves as equal opportunity schools and aim to allow all children access to their system, independent of their parents' income. In the case of the Waldorf school, the lower State subsidy, combined with the fact that school fees are adaptable to each family's situation, means that teacher salaries have to be kept well below State level, while teachers are asked to be as committed as their public school colleagues, if not more so.

Another form of inequality is found in the fact that Waldorf school parents - as any other parents enroling their children in a private school - pay school fees twice: once when part of their income tax goes towards financing public education, and once again when they pay at the private school their children attend without being allowed to deduct these fees from their taxable income.