One toggle, a full pedagogy stack
Freinet, Dalton, Steiner and Jenaplan are not edge cases — together they represent hundreds of Flemish schools that Smartschool consistently treats as deviation. EduVlaanderen has a built-in mode per method, with correct out-of-the-box defaults.
What breaks today
A Freinet school wanting narrative reports in Smartschool must rewrite templates manually every term. A Dalton school wanting task letters imports Excel files. A Steiner school is forced to use grades it pedagogically rejects.
How EduVlaanderen fixes it
One dropdown in director settings enables the method, with preset defaults overriding most pedagogical choices: narrative report for Freinet/Steiner/Jenaplan, task letter for Dalton, period-education blocks for Steiner. Feature flags remain adjustable — a hybrid school combines.
Configuration per method
- Freinet → uses_grades=false, narrative report, circle minutes enabled, free-text module.
- Dalton → task-letter flow per 2 weeks, freedom-in-bound dashboard for students.
- Steiner → period-education blocks (4 weeks), handwritten-style report option, year-rhythm calendar.
- Jenaplan → stamgroep structure, block periods (speaking/playing/working/celebrating), celebration calendar.
- Hybrid → manual selection of features from each method (for blended schools).
- Regular → standard grades + competencies, classical report periods.
Method schools deserve no workaround
A platform treating method schools as "regular school with cosmetic changes" misunderstands the pedagogical project. A narrative report is not "the same report without grades" — it is a fundamentally different evaluation philosophy where the growth of the child matters more than position on a scale. By bringing method-config to the heart of report generation, Freinet and Steiner teachers can truly follow their pedagogy.