Documents

The pressure to succeed academically and have your entire self-worth denoted by grades and numbers; the pressure to outperform your peers and be the very best, juggling the rest of your life to fit into this race; the pressure and expectation that family and personal issues should not be facilitated and understood by the formal education system. This is the situation where students find themselves in education systems all over the world. In this highly stressful environment, and with the world changing everyday, the pressure that students face often threatens their mental health, which concretely impacts on their potential to fully exercise their right to education. Towards the International Students’ Day OBESSU and ESU call on students from all over the world to unite in calling to guarantee a healthy environment for all students!

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has recently published its 2019 Global Education Monitoring (GEM) Report which focuses on Migration, displacement and education. OBESSU welcomes the analysis on how education can build bridges and not walls, as well as the call of the report for more international solidarity. We regret to see almost no space for the learners’ perspective.

The people of Australia are currently facing the effects of the worst environmental crisis in modern history. A place well known for its abundant biodiversity has been engulfed in a cycle of wildfires and as a result, human lives and animal species are in grave danger. As students and learners from all across the world we are seriously alarmed by this situation which doesn’t have a concrete solution in sight, and we want to show our solidarity to the people in Australia.

Is Pisa ready to assess global competence? On the 22nd of October 2020, the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) released its Volume VI: “Are Students Ready to Thrive in an Interconnected World?” presenting the results of the PISA 2018 survey on global competence. As the platform representing school students in Europe, OBESSU has been advocating for an increased focus on qualitative assessment methods. Once again, we call for cautious as PISA global competence assessment results rely on a narrow quantitative evaluation of few indicators which can by no means provide a comprehensive approach of global competence and school student’s performance in this field.

This Global Student Declaration calls for urgent action on climate justice. It seeks the eyes and ears of world leaders, decision makers and those in power to recognise the injustice of the climate crisis and take action, to deliver on climate justice. It seeks solutions to the climate crisis which acknowledge that those who are least responsible, are facing the impacts of anthropogenic climate change faster and to a far greater extent than those who have financially and politically benefited.

The Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions (OBESSU) stands in solidarity with the on-going demonstrations, protests and grassroots movements developed in response to the continuously increasing threats to environmental protection.

Our call for a global campaign for funding educationin the 2021 International Students’ Day

The Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions, the European Students’ Union, the All-Africa Student Union together with the Global Student Forum, and national student unions representing students from secondary and tertiary education, announces its withdrawal from the UNESCO SDG4Youth Network.

In May of 2022, the Organising Bureau of European School Student Unions, together with the Global Student Forum, organised a week-long Study Session at the European Youth Centre in Strasbourg with the support of the Council of Europe. Around 30 participants, student representatives, and activists from all across the world took part in discussions on decolonising school curricula as a way to build more inclusive, less oppressive societies.