Identifying constraints on Roma minority education provision in Romania (original) (raw)
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This Report concludes a full-year project conducted by the Joseph R. Crowley Program in International Human Rights at the Fordham University School of Law. The 2004-2005 Crowley Fellow, Aram Schvey, taught a human-rights seminar on Roma Access to Education in Contemporary Romania. The course culminated in a two-week-long human-rights fact-finding mission to Romania that he organized. During the course of the mission, the students and faculty members traveled hundreds of miles across Romania and spoke to dozens of Roma and non-Roma students and parents, as well as teachers, principals, human rights advocates, government officials, and members of international organizations, such as UNICEF and the World Bank. The delegation was led by Aram Schvey and Professors Martin Flaherty and Tracy Higgins, and included Dean Nitza Escalera and the seven second-year law students enrolled in the seminar:
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RESEARCH AND EDUCATION, 2022
School segregation of Roma has become one of the most studied disciplines in the field of education in the last 20 years. Even though research mentions its persistence, no studies have shown how it persists, this study aims to fill this gap in the specialized literature. Based on the analysis of several reports, this qualitative study aims to show how the school segregation of Roma in Romania survives in the mainstream education system. Despite the fact that in 2004 the state recognized the seriousness of the problem and introduced Ordinance 1540/2007 prohibiting all forms of school segregation, many public-school units in Romania continue to practice this form of discrimination against Roma children. School segregation is a persistent problem in Romania, and studies show that between 1998 and 2016, the proportion of segregated schools increased significantly, becoming a barrier in the Roma integration process. The recommendations of the study on solutions against the school segregation of Roma children aim to involve Roma civil society in the process of monitoring segregated schools, enrolling Roma children from residentially segregated communities in mixed schools and informing parents about the consequences of segregation on Roma children.
Th e right to education of Roma children in Romania: European policies and Romanian practices
After a long history of living in Europe, latterly in democracies governed with reference to human, and children's, rights, Roma children still have a very low education status and very low school participation rates. Th e aims of this article are to review the current state of participation of Roma children in education in European countries, with a special focus on Romania, and to discuss some issues about how the right to education is, or is not, respected in the region. Data accumulated in the last decade are revisited and educational policies are analyzed. Particular attention is given to issues of segregation in education, scrutinized through the lens of Romanian and international education practices. Th e article recommends a number of policy responses, including the value of added cash transfers, as well as action to ensure quality standards in all education settings frequented by Roma children.
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International Conference on Economics, Education and Humanities (ICEEH'14) Dec. 10-11, 2014 Bali (Indonesia), 2014
Every child's right to proper education represents nowadays an axiom. The importance of education in the personal development and its benefits for the social inclusion of an individual were analyzed, conceptualized and put into practice as priorities in every state of the EU. One of the permanent challenges that stands at the basis of the social integration of Roma population remains the approach used for enhancing their educational inclusion, so the questions that we ask and try to answer to are: What makes a strategy-good‖? What makes it-viable‖? Based on the analysis of the current Romanian strategy for Roma educational inclusion, we have drawn up the features that give an educational policy targeting the Roma population the potential to be acknowledged as successful, effective and viable.
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Deleted Journal, 2023
Throughout the 21st century, the equality and inclusion of vulnerable groups has been a constant theme in international debates and on the official agendas of international organisations. In the area of education, the participation of children belonging to these groups is a challenge in all countries, whether or not they have high enrolment rates for the general population. In Greece, the Roma community is considered the most socially vulnerable group. Roma children face significant challenges in terms of education and wider social integration. Schooling programmes for Roma children have been planned in Greece since the end of the last century. However, despite positive ex-post evaluations of these programmes, the expected results have not been achieved. The evaluation of these programmes identifies four distinct stages in the schooling process: (a) Families' decisions regarding the value of their children's school attendance; (b) Cultivating a culture of reducing bureaucratic-administrative issues related to enrolment; (c) Establishing support structures for Roma pupils during their stay in school; and (d) Implementing actions to promote the effective development of knowledge, skills, and competencies of Roma pupils in the school environment. National-level studies have shown that the attendance of Roma children is a complex social phenomenon that extends beyond the educational process. This paper presents a research study conducted in Greece, in comparison with the European level. At the initial research, the University of Patras conducted field research as part of the 'Integration of Roma Children in School' programme, which was funded by the Ministry of Education and the EU. For further analysis of the original data, a qualitative approach of text analysis was employed, utilizing specialized reports from international (European) organizations and national reports from the Ministry of Education in the context of relevant programmes and actions.
2003
This paper purports to illustrate that segregated schools for Roma in Romania provide inferior quality of education and are a major obstacle to the enjoyment of equal educational opportunities by the children who attend them. In the first part of the paper I define the term segregation as used in this article. Next, I briefly highlight the main causes which have led to the present condition of segregated education of Roma. Finally, I evaluate the quality of education in schools with a high percentage of Romani pupils on the basis of the following indicators: school achievement, school facilities and teacher’s qualification. On the last part I summarize policy options in order to raise the quality of education for Roma children.
Roma Parents' Perceptions on Education
Journal of Advances in Education Research, 2019
Politicians and academics from various European countries dealing with the issues of the Roma strongly believe that education can help Roma individuals and groups social integration and improve their living conditions. Therefore, a series of policies measures and programs have been set up to target the educational integration of pupils of Roma origins. What is missing from these actions are the views of Roma themselves. This exactly is the aim of our paper: to give a voice to those parents of Roma origins, whose children go to school or ought to go to school. Our study is based on a qualitative research where participants are individuals of Roma origins living in the suburbs of Thessaloniki (Greece). According to our finding, it seems that Roma parents' that contributed to our research approaches and attitudes broke down some basic and well-established myths about education.