Brussels, 11 December 2025

Cultivating sustainability and green education in schools

In 2025, ECSWE continued its work on sustainability and green education through the Our Green Stories event, a sustainability curriculum draft, climate assessments, a visit to SEKEM, and within our advocacy.

Engaging directly with teachers and pupils

On 10 Octo­ber 2025, ECSWE organ­ised the Our Green Sto­ries online event, bring­ing togeth­er pupils, teach­ers, par­ents, and oth­er inter­est­ed actors to share sto­ries of envi­ron­men­tal action in schools and local com­mu­ni­ties. The sto­ries high­light­ed the many ways sus­tain­abil­i­ty is already being lived, while also inspir­ing fur­ther engage­ment and col­lab­o­ra­tion. One exam­ple of such an ini­tia­tive is tak­ing part in cli­mate assess­ments designed to cal­cu­late school-relat­ed emis­sions and to map exist­ing work in green edu­ca­tion. These assess­ments help schools gain a clear­er under­stand­ing of their cur­rent envi­ron­men­tal impact, area for improve­ment, but also the progress already made.

Publishing a sustainability curriculum

The Stein­er Wal­dorf sus­tain­abil­i­ty cur­ricu­lum, launched this year, intro­duces age-appro­pri­ate learn­ing aims and teach­ing strate­gies for each class lev­el in pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary edu­ca­tion. This cur­ricu­lum also recog­nis­es sus­tain­abil­i­ty prin­ci­ples that are already embed­ded with­in Stein­er Wal­dorf edu­ca­tion across dif­fer­ent coun­tries. By mak­ing these ele­ments more vis­i­ble and struc­tured, the cur­ricu­lum sup­ports teach­ers and schools in con­scious­ly inte­grat­ing sus­tain­abil­i­ty into every­day teach­ing and learn­ing so that schools can ful­fill their col­lec­tive impact for a more sus­tain­able future.

Advocating for sustainability education

Through­out the year, ECSWE con­tin­ued its advo­ca­cy work in the field of sus­tain­abil­i­ty and green edu­ca­tion. In May, our coor­di­na­tor for sus­tain­abil­i­ty and green edu­ca­tion par­tic­i­pat­ed in the Euro­pean Commission’s Work­ing Group on Learn­ing for Sus­tain­abil­i­ty peer-learn­ing activ­i­ty in Slove­nia, with a par­tic­u­lar focus on out­door edu­ca­tion. ECSWE also pre­sent­ed its sus­tain­abil­i­ty work dur­ing the Life­long Learn­ing Week in Brus­sels in ear­ly Decem­ber togeth­er with the Alliance for Child­hood Euro­pean Net­work and the Learn­ing for Well-Being Foun­da­tion on Green Edu­ca­tion as a Path to Resilience. In Sep­tem­ber, an ECSWE del­e­ga­tion trav­elled to SEKEM in Egypt to take part in the World Goetheanum Forum on Sus­tain­able Development.

Further reading