Brussels, 4 August 2020

ET 2020 Working Group Schools finalises its work

ECSWE made an active contribution to the 2018–2020 mandate

In 2018, the Euro­pean Com­mis­sion extend­ed the work­ing cycle of the ET 2020 Work­ing Group Schools. Dur­ing its 2018–2020 man­date, work­ing group mem­bers were invit­ed to par­tic­i­pate in a series of work­ing group meet­ings, peer learn­ing activ­i­ties and sem­i­nars. These activ­i­ties sub­se­quent­ly informed the draft­ing of two pol­i­cy-ori­ent­ed reports on school self-eval­u­a­tion and teacher and school leader careers. Through­out the work­ing cycle, ECSWE was active­ly involved in this work.

• The report Sup­port­ing school self-eval­u­a­tion and devel­op­ment through qual­i­ty assur­ance poli­cies sum­maris­es the work­ing group’s find­ings on how qual­i­ty assur­ance poli­cies can sup­port a school- and teacher-led cul­ture of qual­i­ty enhance­ment and how pol­i­cy mak­ers can sup­port school self-eval­u­a­tion as a key mech­a­nism for school devel­op­ment. The report also includes recent research find­ings and coun­try exam­ples of pol­i­cy development.
• The pol­i­cy guide Sup­port­ing teacher and school leader careers sum­maris­es the work­ing group’s find­ings on how to make the teacher and school leader pro­fes­sion a more attrac­tive career choice. In part one, it sum­maris­es cur­rent chal­lenges, iden­ti­fies six dis­tinct per­spec­tives on career-pro­gres­sion and offers a frame­work for teacher and school leader careers. Part two explores prac­ti­cal exam­ples meant to inspire pol­i­cy development.

• Dur­ing the work­ing group ses­sions, ECSWE was rep­re­sent­ed by its Pres­i­dent Richard Landl and its Man­ag­ing Direc­tor Georg Jür­gens. In the meet­ings, we were fre­quent­ly able to con­tribute ideas from a Wal­dorf per­spec­tive or to present good prac­tice exam­ples from Wal­dorf schools. We were also giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to the draft­ing of writ­ten reports and sug­gest changes to their wording.
• Our con­tri­bu­tions reg­u­lar­ly stressed the val­ue of school auton­o­my and flex­i­bil­i­ty towards alter­na­tive ped­a­gog­i­cal approach­es. They also high­light­ed the need to offer our own Wal­dorf spe­cif­ic teacher train­ing that puts a spe­cial focus on teach­ers devel­op­ing their Per­son­al, Social and Learn­ing to Learn key com­pe­tence that is also cen­tral to the new Life­Comp Frame­work.
• While we con­tributed to both themes, our main focus was on school self-eval­u­a­tion and qual­i­ty assur­ance. The sus­tained infor­mal dia­logue with work­ing group mem­bers con­tributed to deep­en­ing exist­ing rela­tion­ships with Com­mis­sion offi­cials and Min­istry experts. It also facil­i­tat­ed the invi­ta­tion of dis­tin­guished pol­i­cy experts to our Brus­sels con­fer­ence on the Art of Edu­ca­tion on 7th Novem­ber 2019.

• Dur­ing the final Peer Learn­ing Activ­i­ty in Dublin in Feb­ru­ary 2020 on the theme Exter­nal advice to inspire and sup­port schools in devel­op­ing stu­dents’ broad com­pe­tences”, Georg Jür­gens pre­sent­ed the exter­nal mod­er­a­tion pro­ce­dure embed­ded in the New Zealand Cer­tifi­cate of Stein­er Edu­ca­tion. A brief sum­ma­ry made it into chap­ter 2 of the ded­i­cat­ed PLA report (See page 11). This doc­u­ment com­ple­ments the final work­ing group report on school self-eval­u­a­tion and development.
• The final report on school self-eval­u­a­tion and devel­op­ment men­tions the active involve­ment of the Flem­ish Stein­er Schools in the devel­op­ment of the Flem­ish ref­er­ence frame­work for Qual­i­ty in Edu­ca­tion. Along­side oth­er exam­ples, the ref­er­ence frame­work illus­trates a chap­ter on broad stake­hold­er engage­ment in qual­i­ty assur­ance process­es (see page 17).