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Open Society Institute Decries Discrimination Against Roma Children
Despite years of governmental promises, Roma children in many European countries remain excluded from quality education, according to a report released today by the Open Society Institute.
Segregated into Roma-only classes or schools, wrongly shunted into special schools for children with intellectual disabilities, crowded into decrepit classrooms and let down by teachers’ low expectations, Roma children face serious challenges to complete even basic education.
- Roma are Europe’s largest minority and a key part of its future. Unless European leaders live up to their promises, Europe will pay dearly for losing another generation of Roma children to discrimination and neglect, says the Report.
- The OSI reports confirm that segregation of Roma children is not only based on the colour of their skin, but also provides lower quality education for our children. Europe should not accept such serious discrimination. Hungary was the first country to create a legal basis for desegregation. At least a dozen EU Member States should follow these steps, said MEP Viktória Mohácsi.
The report notes that the segregation of Roma in schools is pervasive but unacknowledged in Slovakia, Macedonia, Croatia and Montenegro. OSI Report also warns of great discrepancies of official data and data collected by NGOs or research initiatives, which then leads to a situation in which education policies are targeted or assessed on the basis of fragmented and incomplete information, which is unacceptable.
OSI warns that governments need attend to fundamental inadequacies in national school systems, and to provide better support for teachers in the monitored region must receive better support. Teachers in schools with a majority of Roma students rarely have access to training preparing them to work with a diverse classroom; inflexible curricula further limit their ability to tailor lessons to meet students’ needs.
The reports also give examples of progress achieved in the monitored countries, such as the Roma Education Initiative in Montenegro and the NGO community’s outreach programmes in Macedonia. which have helped forge connections with Roma families.
Also, notes the Report, each of the countries monitored has also joined the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 initiative for coordinated approach to improving the situation of Roma in Europe. However, the Report warns, positive examples and commitments alone are insufficient to ensure meaningful improvement.
The Open Society Institute calls upon Governments and the European Union to bring about meaningful change: where they have not done so, Governments must acknowledge and prohibit segregation in education.
The situation of Roma children in education is detailed in the series of monitoring reports Equal access to quality education for Roma. The volume includes a Europe-wide overview and individual country reports on Croatia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Slovakia. OSI released country reports in the same series on Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Serbia in April this year. The reports give an in-depth perspective and highlight policy actions necessary to address an alarming situation.
The full text of the report is available online at www.eumap.org
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