Brussel, 13 February 2025

Strengthening our commitment to sustainability and green education

In 2024, ECSWE reinforced its work on sustainability and green education, reflected in our policy monitoring, project development, and growing engagement with members and partner organisations.

Building a European sustainability network

In 2024, ECSWE began devel­op­ing a Euro­pean sus­tain­abil­i­ty net­work between its mem­ber organ­i­sa­tions and exter­nal part­ners. The net­work cur­rent­ly con­sists of rep­re­sen­ta­tives from 12 nation­al Stein­er Wal­dorf asso­ci­a­tions, three edu­ca­tion­al insti­tu­tions, and two sus­tain­abil­i­ty organ­i­sa­tions: CO2ero, a Ger­man con­sul­tan­cy spe­cial­is­ing in car­bon assess­ments for schools, and Gaia Edu­ca­tion, an inter­na­tion­al provider of sus­tain­abil­i­ty edu­ca­tion pro­grammes. A kick-off ses­sion of the net­work took place at the end of 2024. The next step for the net­work is to direct­ly engage with schools. To ampli­fy the net­work, in 2025, ECSWE will organ­ise a cli­mate sto­ry­telling con­fer­ence.

Advancing the Green School project

ECSWE also sub­mit­ted a con­cept note for the Green School Project to strength­en sus­tain­abil­i­ty in schools. This includes the devel­op­ment of cli­mate assess­ments, to be imple­ment­ed in 2025. These assess­ments include emis­sion cal­cu­la­tions and inter­views on green edu­ca­tion prac­tices, sup­port­ing schools in reflect­ing on and improv­ing their sus­tain­abil­i­ty strategies.

Monitoring and aligning with EU policies

ECSWE con­tin­ues to mon­i­tor the Euro­pean Union’s efforts for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and green tran­si­tion. In 2024, we paid close atten­tion to the Coun­cil Rec­om­men­da­tion on Learn­ing for the Green Tran­si­tion, reviewed the Euro­pean Sus­tain­abil­i­ty Com­pe­tence Frame­work (Green­Comp), and pre­pared coun­try-spe­cif­ic sum­maries of school-relat­ed rec­om­men­da­tions in the Spring Pack­age of the Euro­pean Semes­ter 2024, with a focus on green edu­ca­tion. This work sup­port­ed both our inter­nal strate­gic plan­ning and the devel­op­ment of nation­al advo­ca­cy efforts by our members.

Further reading