Brussels, 26 May 2023

Council meetings as space for exchange and learning

Throughout 2022, our council members came together three times. The meetings served as platforms for member collaboration, covering topics such as UNICEF’s What Makes Me? report, and the recognition and curriculum development of Steiner Waldorf schools across Europe.

Bringing UNICEF’s What Makes Me? report closer to our members

In the online coun­cil meet­ing held on 4 and 5 Feb­ru­ary 2022, we were joined by Daniel Kropf from the Learn­ing for Well-being Foun­da­tion, and by Dominic Richard­son from UNICEF Inno­cen­ti. Togeth­er with Mar­tyn Raw­son, we looked into the recent­ly pub­lished What Makes Me? UNICEF report on the nine core capac­i­ties for liv­ing and learn­ing. The report strong­ly res­onates with the Stein­er Wal­dorf ped­a­gog­i­cal approach as it also empha­sis­es nur­tur­ing each child’s unique poten­tial across men­tal, emo­tion­al, phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al dimensions.

Members meet in Portugal to discuss recognition of Steiner Waldorf education

Being ful­ly recog­nised means that Stein­er Wal­dorf schools are allowed to deliv­er their cur­ricu­lum, and are fund­ed in such a way that the finan­cial ele­ment does not pre­vent any fam­i­ly from choos­ing our schools. In many of our mem­bers’ coun­tries, this is not the case.

In our coun­cil meet­ing in Lis­bon from 6 to 8 May 2022, we gath­ered to exchange on the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, recent devel­op­ments and future plans for bet­ter recog­ni­tion of our schools, and more free­dom in edu­ca­tion. Insight­ful dis­cus­sions about the Euro­pean-lev­el chal­lenges were cov­ered by the Euro­pean Coun­cil of Nation­al Asso­ci­a­tions of Inde­pen­dent Schools and OIDEL, while our mem­bers from Por­tu­gal, Bel­gium, Den­mark and Spain pre­sent­ed relat­ed chal­lenges on their nation­al levels.

Curriculum experts gather in Belgium to exchange ideas

Between 14 and 16 Octo­ber 2022, the coun­cil gath­ered in Bel­gium around the top­ic of Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ric­u­la and the chal­lenges of imple­ment­ing such cur­ric­u­la on the nation­al and school lev­els. We also got informed about the devel­op­ments in the Com­mis­sion’s Work­ing Group on Schools from our rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mar­tyn Raw­son, regard­ing intro­duc­tion of the blend­ed learn­ing con­cept into schools, and the Group’s efforts towards help­ing Ukrain­ian stu­dents, teach­ers and schools deal with the chal­lenges of the war.

We deep­ened the top­ic by lis­ten­ing to our Ukrain­ian mem­bers about the dev­as­tat­ing con­di­tions for the Ukrain­ian schools, includ­ing recent bomb­ing of one school. Our part­ners at the Fre­unde der Erziehungskun­st shared their work in pro­vid­ing emer­gency ped­a­gogy train­ing as a cru­cial response to such experiences.