The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Agency co-organised a webinar in April 2022 on fostering stakeholder dialogue on legislation and policy. The webinar report is now available on UNESCO’s website.
Participants in the webinar came from the Agency and UNESCO, and from education ministries, youth and educational organisations from across Europe and the world. They shared examples of stakeholder dialogue being used to develop inclusive policy in their countries and its importance as an on-going input to policy implementation. The webinar overwhelmingly affirmed the importance of including stakeholder voices in educational policy development and implementation.
The new webinar report includes a description of every speaker’s input. It provides a summary of audience questions and inputs, including the responses from the webinar participants. The closing remarks give an overall reflection on the webinar and its discussions and outlines the participants’ agreement that inclusive education is a human right and that all stakeholders are working towards the vision of inclusive education.
Finally, the report highlights the three key messages from the webinar:
- Stakeholder dialogue does not just happen – it must be actively prepared for: Policy-makers must make an effort to support and include stakeholder dialogue in policy development and decision-making
- The process of meaningful stakeholder dialogue must be understood as a marathon, not a sprint: Stakeholder dialogue is not a one-off event, but is an on-going process, and stakeholders should be involved in every part of the process
- Dialogue must aim at long term stakeholder commitment: Engaging stakeholders in decision-making processes encourages their support for and ownership of policy implementation and outcomes.
To read the webinar report, visit UNESCO’s website. The Agency’s webinar news item contains more information about the webinar. Visit UNESCO’s YouTube channel to watch the full webinar recording in English, French or Spanish.