Tag Archives: Education

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…

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia, Roma, and Schools

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Slovenia, Roma, and Schools

An editorial following an incident in a football field in a school where a Roma boy took the ball from an ethnic Slovene who fell and had to be brought to a hospital. The Roma boy was deemed “aggressive”.

The editorial argues that ethnicity has nothing to do with capacities, behaviour, and values.

Blaming Roma is simply not an acceptable excuse.

Europe

Roma and Schools

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Roma and Schools

An article about Roma access to education. As usual, in spite of their good intentions, the generalisation is quite obvious: All Roma have issues accessing education. As a result, for the average reader, most Roma must be illiterate.

One speaks here of the most segregated Roma living in segregated settlements, and not of all Roma.

Austria News Eastern Europe News Western Europe Slovenia

Austria, Slovenia, and Roma

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Austria, Slovenia, and Roma

A three-day excursion by students from the Pedagogical College from Klagenfurt (Pädagogische Hochschule Kärnten, Viktor Frankl Hochschule) took place in Prekmurje and Porabje from 14 to 16 May 2025 as part of the seminar Research Learning in the Slovenia Region.

On the first day of the excursion, the students visited the Roma Information Center, which also includes Radio Romic and the Romano Pušča Kindergarten. According to the article, they learned about an example of good practice in the inclusion of preschool Roma children.

Well, Slovenia is not really successful there …

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia and Roma

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Slovenia and Roma

When stereotypes mix with education… Music, songs, this is what Roma children are faced with in “integration”. According to the article, “Roma children actively participated the whole time, we checked on a regular basis whether they understood the stories presented, as some have difficulty understanding the Slovenian language. Smiling and motivated, they happily participated in the creative workshop and coloured a colouring book with fairy-tale characters from the show.”

This is not how one achieves integration…

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia, Kindergarten, and Roma

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Slovakia, Kindergarten, and Roma

The intention of the Slovak Minister of Education Tomáš Drucker to introduce compulsory pre-primary education from the age of three is not only causing resentment among a group of parents who want to have their child at home at a young age, but also a consideration of whether it will be truly effective and quickly applicable in practice. Currently, it seems most likely that the ministry will need finances for this.

The Ministry of Education claims that it wants to help children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds with the law.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia and Education

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Slovenia and Education

Today, at a press conference on pre-primary education, the Minister of Education presented a plan to introduce kindergarten from the age of three for all children, with the option to start as early as two. This step could help, but instead of truly integrating children from excluded communities, it risks separating them even more, said Progressive Slovakia MP Ingrid Kosová.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia, Schools, and Roma

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Slovenia, Schools, and Roma

An article about the fact that Roma drop out of school in Slovenia. According to the article, only 10 to 20 percent of Roma children complete primary school. What is problematic, is what they ascertain as being its cause: Successful Roma who abuse the social system and are role model as they have more money than the others.

They also add that speaking Slovenian is an issue, as most Roma children do not speak it when they arrive in kindergarten.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Brno: “Problematic” school

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Brno: “Problematic” school

It used to be an elite institution where no Roma students attended. However, after merging with a neighboring elementary school, Merhautova Elementary School became a school where most of the students are Roma and, in recent years, Ukrainian. Does this sound like a recipe for disaster? But that did not happen at the Brno elementary school. Children and parents expressed their opinion in a satisfaction survey that “Merhautka” has the best internal climate of all Brno schools.

The proof that integration works.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia and Roma

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Slovenia and Roma

For some reason, the Slovenian press published two articles about the international Roma day which happened a while back. In one, a teacher published a book with poems in Romanes and Slovene, unveiled during April 8th celebrations. In the other, Roma children who attend a “regular” kindergarten (to the surprise of the journalist perform for April 8th – with of course lots of stereotypes.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Segregation

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Slovakia and Segregation

Roma children still face entrenched discrimination in education. This is according to a report by Amnesty International and the European Roma Rights Center. The organizations are calling on the government to adopt systemic measures to end segregation in schools as soon as possible. The Ministry of Education responds that it is actively addressing this issue.

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