Tag Archives: Education

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Stolipinovo and School Start

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Stolipinovo and School Start

Stolipinovo is one of the largest Mahala (Roma neighbourhood) in Bulgaria in the city of Plovdiv. On the eve of the new school year, Plovdiv Regional Governor Prof. Hristina Yancheva visited Plovdiv’s Stolipinovo to talk to parents, children and volunteers from the local community, the regional administration announced. The meetings aim to build trust and motivate families to support education as a path to a better future for their children.

Let’s hope this works.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia and Education

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Serbia and Education

At the beginning of another school year, the Municipality of Beočin provided school supplies for 205 Roma students attending two primary schools.

The distribution of school supplies in recent days was carried out by the coordinator for Roma issues of the Municipal Administration of Beočin Ismet Ademovski and the pedagogical assistant at the Primary School “Jovan Grčić Milenko” Feruz Drmaku.

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Bulgaria: Desegregation

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Bulgaria: Desegregation

For the third consecutive year, Montana Municipality will work on a project for educational desegregation and integration of students from the Kosharnik district, announced Mayor Zlatko Zhivkov.

Free transportation to five of the schools in the city has been provided for 218 children from the Roma district. This is a basic condition for them to attend class. Also, most of them – 198 students will be provided with teaching aids and materials. An educational mediator will establish the school-family relationship and monitor for manifestations of discrimination.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Baruvas

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Baruvas

Over forty Roma high school and university students from all over the country participated in the twenty-sixth Baruvas meeting (Romanes “we grow”) in the Jizera Mountains at the end of August. The program offered workshops on hate speech, Roma history, Romani language and traditions, working with emotions, activism, a healthy lifestyle and a space for sharing and support.

News Switzerland

Switzerland and Travellers

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Switzerland and Travellers

Schooling for Roma children in Valais is still lacking. However, a year ago, State Councilor for Education Christophe Darbellay expressed his desire to find an “ad hoc” solution for these traveling children.

Well, they are doing something: Trying to prevent them entering the canton…

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia, Schools, and Romanes

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Serbia, Schools, and Romanes

The director of the Office for Roma Inclusion of the AP Vojvodina Ljiljana Mihajlović, together with provincial deputy Jelena Jovanović, visited the Vršac College of Education and Medicine with the aim of supporting the enrolment of a new generation of students for the preschool teacher program in the Romani language.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Roma Assistant

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Roma Assistant

The Slovene government has specified what “Roma Assistants” in the context or primary schools are. One outraged lady was complaining that this was discriminatory, and got the full legal explanation of this job and its description.

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Bulgarian School Dropouts

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Bulgarian School Dropouts

Another article on the school dropouts in the Plovdiv region. Apparently, 430 children dropped out last year, prompting the authorities to increase inspections to a total of 22’000. It turns out that 290 of these children dropped out because they left the country. The 140 other who dropped out, according to the news did so because of a “lack of financial opportunities for inclusion in the education system and of course – early marriages.

They could have dropped the “of course” here…

Italy News Western Europe

Italy and Roma

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Italy and Roma

An article about the fact that parking Roma in camps or razing them is not going to resolve the issue and will not bring children to school. In fact, most children in those camps do not go to school at all.

Bad, but nothing new in Italy.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia: Desegregation

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Slovakia: Desegregation

Just two years ago, all poor children from the Pod Pustým hradom area in Zvolen sat in the classrooms of one elementary school. Students from the majority population gradually left it.

More than half (57 percent) of all socially disadvantaged children in Zvolen attended this school. The other five schools in the city had no such students at all or very few of them.

However, in 2022, the city of Zvolen began to address the segregation of Roma students by redefining school districts. Simply put, children from the poor community no longer belonged to one school district, and therefore to only one of the Zvolen schools.

They now began to assign them to school districts not by street, but by entrance numbers. Today, children from generational poverty no longer fall under one Zvolen school, but attend three – one private and two public.

This is good!

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Education and Poverty

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Education and Poverty

According to the article, due to poverty, migration or early marriages: Over 430 children from Plovdiv region have dropped out of school.
Well a bit further, the article becomes a bit more differentiated: The largest number of children – 290 – dropped out of school due to going abroad. Prof. Hristina Yancheva – regional governor of Plovdiv: “The reasons for dropping out of the education system can be summarized briefly – lack of financial opportunities for inclusion in the education system, migration and of course – early marriages.”

The last point may occur, but there can’t be that many of those …

Hungary News Eastern Europe

Hungary and Segregation

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Hungary and Segregation

The Budapest Francophone Journal met with Gábor Erőss, a 52-year-old Hungarian sociologist, researcher at the Institute of Sociology of the Center for Social Sciences (TK SzI) and former deputy mayor of Budapest’s 8th district (Józsefváros) between 2019 and 2024. A member of the Párbeszéd Green Party, he exercised his mandate with a clear priority: to combat school segregation in a long-marginalized neighborhood. Trained in France, at Paris Descartes University, then at the EHESS, Gábor Erőss reflects on the educational policies he has implemented and his vision of school as a tool for social emancipation.

Montenegro News Eastern Europe

Montenegro: Mediators

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Montenegro: Mediators

The Montenegro Ministry of Education and Science has announced that a competition has been launched for the recruitment of educational mediators to support the education of Roma students for the 2025/2026 school year. The plan is to recruit 85 people, including 50 mediators for primary education and 35 for secondary education.

Well, nice intentions, but will it suffice?

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe Poland

Dikh i na Bistrer

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Dikh i na Bistrer

Several ROMEA Fellows are participating in the international educational event Dikh He Na Bister 2025 (“Look and Remember”), which takes place in Poland from July 29 to August 4. The gathering of young people from all over Europe commemorates the genocide of Roma and Sinti during World War II and offers education in human rights and the fight against racism.

News Eastern Europe Serbia

Serbia: Education Support

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Serbia: Education Support

Despite affirmative action measures in education, the percentage of Roma children, especially girls, who complete school remains low. In order to empower and support young Roma women, Bibija – the Roma Women’s Center and the Roma Students’ Initiative, with the support of UNICEF, launched the mentoring program “Delimo”.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Romology Closure

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Romology Closure

The Institute of Romology Studies at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Health of the University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra is closing down after 35 years. At the end of June, the proposal of the Dean of the Faculty, Tomáš Sollár, was approved by the Academic Senate.

The restructuring of the institute is to create a department of social work for Roma communities at the Department of Social Work and Social Sciences. This also includes personnel cuts – from the original three assistant professors and one associate professor, only two assistant professors will remain in the new department.

Says a lot about priorities …

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Fate in Bulgaria

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Fate in Bulgaria

Dafina Paskaleva’s life was not easy: he grew up in an orphanage, because his Roma parents apparently abandoned him as a baby. Everyone told him that he would never amount to anything. Today, he is a teacher who believes in his students – and they in him.

Bulgaria News Eastern Europe

Religion and School

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Religion and School

Bulgaria introduced a mandatory religion subject with two options “Orthodoxy” and “Islam”. According to the Centre for Interethnic Dialogue and Tolerance “Amalipe” (a Roma organisation), this may cause tension in ethnically mixed areas and deepen educational segregation. Additional tension may also arise in communities that follow forms of Christianity other than Orthodoxy and Islam other than Orthodoxy, for example, various Protestant denominations, Catholicism.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia, Schools, and Roma

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Slovakia, Schools, and Roma

On Paper, they are full, schools receive subsidies for Roma, but they cannot keep them in the classroom. They cannot keep Roma students, even though they receive millions in subsidies from the state. Schools say they do what they can, but after the end of compulsory school attendance, it is practically impossible.

On the other hand, resident of marginalised Roma communities say “they just get the money for the children here and they don’t care about them anymore”.

Moldova News Eastern Europe

One of those Statistics

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One of those Statistics

According to this article, only 17.5% of children aged 7 to 16 attend the general education system in Soroca, Moldova. The situation was analysed during a public consultation organized by the Ministry of Education and Research in partnership with UNICEF Moldova, IPN reports.

Only issue: No one knows how many Roma are living there…

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