MINELRES: EUMAP: Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma - First volume of monitoring reports

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Original sender: Joost van Beek <jbeek@osi.hu>


EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program
Open Society Institute
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NEW EUMAP MONITORING REPORTS: Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma

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Thank you for forwarding this announcement! 

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EUMAP is pleased to announce the release of a new volume of monitoring
reports, "Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma" - covering
Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Serbia. 

The volume of four country reports was produced by OSI's EU Monitoring
and Advocacy Program (EUMAP), in cooperation with OSI's Roma
Participation Program (RPP) and the Education Support Program (ESP) of
the Open Society Institute. The volume was presented yesterday at the
Conference "Education Reform to Support Roma Inclusion" convened by the
Roma Education Fund in Budapest. Reports on the other five countries
participating in the Decade of Roma Inclusion (Croatia, Czech Republic,
Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovakia) are due later in the year.

The reports are available online at http://www.eumap.org/topics/romaed

To receive a hard copy, use our publication order form at
http://www.eumap.org/puborder

A press release is available at
http://www.eumap.org/topics/minority/reports/roma_education/pressrelease
/1englishpr.pdf 

For further information, contact EUMAP (eumap@osi.hu) or Miriam Anati,
EUMAP Advocacy Manager (manati@osieurope.org)


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REPORTS MAIN FINDINGS:

In the four reviewed countries most Roma children face disadvantage in
every aspect of their education. Some Roma children never enrol in the
education system while others are shunted into segregated schools or
classes where the quality of education is invariably lower: lower
standards in the curricula, poor human and material resources allocated,
low expectations of teachers, materials used in the classroom which
often reflect prejudice and bias. 

The Governments participating in the "Decade of Roma Inclusion
2005-2015" have energetically adopted policies and programmes to improve
education opportunities for Roma. In particular, National Action Plans
were drafted in the framework of the "Decade of Roma Inclusion
2005-2015", of which education is one of the main four focus areas. Yet
in the first two years of the Decade, Governments in the four monitored
countries have scarcely found their bearings on the enormous task lying
ahead. 

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SOME FIGURES:

In Romania and Bulgaria 15 per cent of Roma children never enrol in the
education system. For those who do enrol in school, the drop-out rates
are 4 to 6 times higher than the national average. In Serbia the
drop-out rate of Roma children is 15 times higher than national average.
In Bulgaria up to 70 percent of Roma children study in segregated
schools or classes, while 51 per cent of pupils in special education are
Roma; in Hungary, over half of Roma children study in classes that are
predominantly Roma. According to some estimates, Roma make up 80-85 per
cent of pupils in special schools for children with intellectual
disabilities in Belgrade, Serbia.

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MAIN RECOMMENDATIONS:

Detailed policy recommendations are included in the country reports.
Among other actions, recommendations call on governments to: 

- highlight the importance of pre-school education in ensuring equal
chances to Roma children (only 16 percent of Roma children attend
pre-school education in Bulgaria).

- capitalise on the good practices that have been developed such as the
network of Roma school inspectors in Romania, NGO pilot projects
training Roma teaching assistants in Serbia, and NGO projects
implementing desegregation in Bulgaria. 
 
- ensure all data necessary to informed policymaking is collected.
Currently, even official estimates on the proportion of Roma in the
population are widely held to be unreliable. With no mechanisms in place
to consistently monitor the proportion of Roma who attend schools, and
track their results against the average or majority population, the
policies adopted are unlikely to make any headway. 

- create financial and other incentives for national and local
administrations to implement integrated, inclusive, high-quality
education for all. 

Action in support of today's children will ensure that future Roma
adults are given the tools they need to access employment, and actively
and constructively participate in the societies in which they live.


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