SOLIDAR FOUNDATION
The SOLIDAR Foundation is the cooperation platform of SOLIDAR; a European network of NGOs working to advance social justice in Europe.
ID: 310206914824-45
Lobbying Activity
Meeting with Arto Virtanen (Cabinet of Commissioner Jutta Urpilainen)
17 Jan 2023 · Cooperation with civil society, social justice
Response to Education for environmental sustainability
7 May 2021
Education for environmental sustainability is a transversal topic that permeates all types and levels of learning, requiring constant adaptation to the needs of the environment and the incoming research. The Roadmap clearly identifies this need for collaboration across the learners, types of education and education professionals through its reference to the whole-institution approach. The aim is the development of transversal competences which makes it the case that the Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning 2018 should be guiding the work on any future initiative involving education for the environment. This is essential to be highlighted considering that the Roadmap envisions helping Member States to integrate environmental issues in their national education systems. The goal is to include the soft skills linked to critical thinking, problem solving, learning to learn, teamwork, empathy that are linked with successful implementation of education for environmental sustainability, based on UNESCO research. For this reason, the civic competences and the global citizenship that are fostered by the SDG subtarget 4.7, the Council Recommendation on Key Competences for Lifelong Learning, the Paris Declaration on Promoting Citizenship and Common Values must be clearly spelled out in this Roadmap. SOLIDAR Foundation is pleased with the acknowledgment that the civil society must be involved in this, to contribute as a partner, and highlights the tremendous awareness raising work and education provided by CSOs on the topic of sustainable development. In this sense, non-formal and informal education are indispensable tools for each learner considering the need for a lifelong and lifewide learning approach that permeates every daily experience of the learners. The validation of non-formal and informal learning must become a reality, with adequate financial support provided to validation processes, with adequate information being provided to all learners, with support provided to all learners to undergo the lengthy and complex validation process and with all education stakeholders involved in the process. Since 2012, the validations systems have improved only in 14 EU member states, only 7 member states have specific national budget lines on validation, while the acquisition of qualifications through validation is still not possible in 9 member states. Learners have to be supported to reflect on the competences that they developed outside of the formal education sector, must be encouraged to continue learning in all settings and must have their green competences validated if education for environment sustainability is to be mainstreamed across European societies. Any such comprehensive change of the learning paradigm has to be associated with adequate public investment. The investment in education and training has not reached pre-2008 levels and has been constantly affected by cuts. Similarly, CSOs’ funding has been significantly decreased in light of the pandemic and the shrinking civic space. For CSOs to continue non-formal and informal education for sustainability and for the formal education sector to integrate this there must be a requirement on Member States to increase investment in education and earmark sums for education for sustainability, while RFF, E+, CERV, ESF+ have to be constantly connected to support the development of civic and transversal competences that facilitate learning about the environment, ensuring that each future initiative for education and training (e.g. Individual Learning Accounts) includes the development of transversal skills for sustainable development.
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