Brussels, 25 March 2026

Expanding ECSWE’s advocacy strategy

Throughout 2025, ECSWE put its efforts into developing a new advocacy strategy, an activity supported by the EU through its Civil Society Cooperation fund.

Defining five strategic priorities for our advocacy

The new advo­ca­cy strat­e­gy defines five pri­or­i­ty areas for ECSWE advo­ca­cy between 2025 and 2029. Those are the edu­ca­tion­al free­dom and ped­a­gog­i­cal diver­si­ty, an age-appro­pri­ate dig­i­tal tran­si­tion, strength­en­ing the Stein­er Wal­dorf teach­ing pro­fes­sion, con­text-sen­si­tive forms of school eval­u­a­tion and assess­ment, and advanc­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion and recog­ni­tion in edu­ca­tion and civic life. The strat­e­gy strength­ens ECSWE’s role as the Euro­pean voice for its mem­bers and sup­ports stronger advo­ca­cy align­ment across our mem­ber coun­tries. It also pro­vides a clear­er basis for coor­di­nat­ed advo­ca­cy efforts and future collaboration.

Creating the strategy in collaboration with our members

The advo­ca­cy group, com­posed of ECSWE mem­bers and experts, met reg­u­lar­ly through­out 2025 to joint­ly iden­ti­fy and re-shape advo­ca­cy pri­or­i­ties. A key mile­stone was the coun­cil meet­ing in Latvia in Octo­ber 2025, where the advo­ca­cy group’s work was pre­sent­ed to all mem­bers. In a ded­i­cat­ed work­ing ses­sion, sev­er­al groups worked in par­al­lel to refine and pri­ori­tise the con­tent, iden­ti­fy­ing what should be includ­ed, fur­ther devel­oped, or removed. The advo­ca­cy group and ECSWE board then con­tin­ued their focused work and pre­sent­ed the final ver­sion of the advo­ca­cy strat­e­gy to mem­bers at the online coun­cil meet­ing in Feb­ru­ary 2026, mark­ing the tran­si­tion from strat­e­gy devel­op­ment to its implementation.

Implementing the strategy in Europe and beyond

Fol­low­ing the new advo­ca­cy strat­e­gy, sev­er­al actions need to be tak­en through­out 2026. A thor­ough web­site update is due, to bet­ter reflect the five strate­gic pri­or­i­ties. The ECSWE team will con­tin­ue to mon­i­tor the Euro­pean Union devel­op­ments in the field of edu­ca­tion and offer its expe­ri­ence and exper­tise in the doc­u­ments and activ­i­ties that match the five strate­gic pri­or­i­ties. ECSWE will coop­er­ate with its part­ner organ­i­sa­tions and organ­ise events to address diverse issues relat­ed to its strate­gic pri­or­i­ties. More­over, ECSWE will extend its inter­est in edu­ca­tion poli­cies in the Coun­cil of Europe, the Unit­ed Nations, and UNESCO. As the edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy land­scape in Europe and world-wide changes, and as the real­i­ties of Stein­er Wal­dorf schools in Europe change, so will the ECSWE advo­ca­cy strategy.