Fol­low­ing the votes of yes­ter­day, we are delight­ed to report that sev­er­al of our ideas are now reflect­ed in the final text. It might there­fore become an impor­tant resource for our mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions when nego­ti­at­ing with nation­al or region­al gov­ern­ments on dig­i­tal edu­ca­tion poli­cies. Some of the key demands towards pol­i­cy mak­ers can be sum­marised as follows:

MEPs high­light the need “to invest more in inter­dis­ci­pli­nary research to assess the long-term impacts of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion on learn­ing” and the “var­i­ous impacts of dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies on the edu­ca­tion and devel­op­ment of chil­dren”. From our per­spec­tive, any ambi­tious digi­ti­sa­tion agen­da should be based on sol­id evi­dence of both, a pos­i­tive impact on the intend­ed learn­ing out­comes, and the absence of prob­lem­at­ic and unin­tend­ed side-effects.

MEPs fur­ther insist on intro­duc­ing dig­i­tal tech­nolo­gies “in a learn­er-focused, age- appro­pri­ate and devel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed way” and high­light the impor­tance of “mas­ter­ing basic trans­ver­sal skills” as a “fun­da­men­tal pre­req­ui­site for the acqui­si­tion of dig­i­tal skills and com­pe­tences.” This links well with the holis­tic approach to ICT and media edu­ca­tion pro­mot­ed in Wal­dorf schools and needs to be fol­lowed up with con­crete action at the nation­al lev­el. Our mem­bers are open to fur­ther dis­cuss our tried and test­ed approach with pol­i­cy mak­ers and to show­case how our schools imple­ment it by means of a devel­op­ment-ori­ent­ed ICT and media curriculum.

Par­lia­ment fur­ther­more high­lights the need to give teach­ers the “free­dom to choose the best com­bi­na­tion of teach­ing meth­ods” and empow­er­ing them “through suf­fi­cient flex­i­bil­i­ty and auton­o­my.” The direct “teacher-stu­dent inter­ac­tion” dur­ing “in-per­son learn­ing” is fur­ther­more high­light­ed as “cru­cial to the well-being and devel­op­ment of stu­dents”. From a Wal­dorf per­spec­tive, ped­a­gog­i­cal free­dom and a per­son­al rela­tion­ship with stu­dents are key enabling fac­tors of qual­i­ty edu­ca­tion. Our mem­ber asso­ci­a­tions at the nation­al lev­el are open to dis­cuss with pol­i­cy mak­ers how to best imple­ment this with­in the giv­en nation­al framework.

Even though the scope of the res­o­lu­tion was broad­ened and has become more bal­anced with the focus on age-appro­pri­ate media edu­ca­tion, its ambi­tious and sys­temic digi­ti­sa­tion agen­da remains in place. The most vis­i­ble evi­dence of this dynam­ic are Par­lia­men­t’s sup­port for the new bench­mark for mea­sur­ing the dig­i­tal com­pe­tence of 8th graders and its call for a vari­ety of mon­i­tor­ing tools and account­abil­i­ty mea­sures at nation­al level.

We there­fore wel­come the Euro­pean Parliament’s call for the involve­ment of stake­hold­ers “rep­re­sent­ing dif­fer­ent approach­es from inside and out­side main­stream edu­ca­tion” by means of the new Euro­pean Dig­i­tal Edu­ca­tion Hubs. This involve­ment will be of crit­i­cal impor­tance to best reflect the needs of the inde­pen­dent school sec­tor in this impor­tant debate.