Tag Archives: Segregation

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia: Roma Strategy

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Slovakia: Roma Strategy

The non-legislative document Action Plans for the Strategy for Equality, Inclusion and Participation of Roma by 2030 for the years 2025-2027 was submitted to the interdepartmental commentary procedure. The strategy highlights a set of starting points and goals that aim to stop the segregation of Roma communities, a significant positive turn in the social inclusion of Roma, non-discrimination, changing attitudes and improving coexistence.

But it also pushes for de-facto segregated schools by promoting teaching in Romanes.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Education of Roma

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Slovakia and Education of Roma

Vlado Rafael, the Head of eduRoma MGO says Roma children can also study to become psychologists in Britain. Here they end up in special schools.

The article addresses the largest misinformation about Roma and education currently circulating in Slovakia: What is the status of the lawsuit filed against Slovakia by the European Commission for the segregation of Roma children in education, what impact does their placement in special schools for students with mild mental disabilities, where up to 70-80 percent of them end up, have on the future of Roma, why, according to non-governmental organizations, the amendment to the Education Act will further exacerbate the problem, and how Roma students are treated differently in Great Britain, where many of them successfully graduate from universities.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and Segregated Schools

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Slovakia and Segregated Schools

The elementary school on Krčméryho Street in Nitra is now attended exclusively by Roma children, but several Ukrainian students have also joined. Years ago, it was a mixed school, but parents of non-Roma children withdrew their children. A view of what this means first hand

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia and School Segregation

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Slovakia and School Segregation

Slovakia has been condemned by the EU for its de-facto school segregation of Roma children. The latest measures on de-segregation of schools voted by the Slovak parliament are being criticised by the association EduRoma. The parliament decided to ban two-shifts operations in schools and to teach Romanes in classes. EduRoma says that “In the name of language education, you will be able to officially separate those children from other children. You can segregate them in the name of language education, no one will tell you anything about it.”

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia: Counting Roma Children

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Czechia: Counting Roma Children

Recent reports in the media about the collection of an estimate of the number of Roma children in primary schools have caused strong reactions and much confusion. This process, which has been running regularly since 2015, aims to monitor how the situation of Roma children in Czech education is developing and whether progress is being made in reducing segregation. The collection of data is a response to the decision of the European Court of Human Rights and the pressure of the European Commission, which drew the Czech Republic’s attention to the discriminatory practice against Roma children. This procedure is not a novelty.

Nevertheless, the criteria for saying who is Rom are dubious …

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia: School Segregation

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Czechia: School Segregation

The Czech Republic had ten years to take action against the segregation of Roma children in schools. However, according to the European Commission, the situation has not improved, so it called on Czechia again in October to rectify it.

Although there are fifteen primary schools in Kladno in central Bohemia, students from poor, predominantly Roma families attend only two of them, with exceptions. The elementary school in Pařížská Street in the Kročehlava housing estate, which used to be special, and the one in Školská Street in Starý Kročehlavy. The results of the students there and the level of education they receive here are very different from the other “basics” in Kladno.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia and Segregated Schools

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Czechia and Segregated Schools

The Ministry of Regional Development joined the Memorandum on Cooperation in Ending Ethnic Segregation in Education, which was signed in the spring of this year by representatives of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the National Pedagogical Institute and research organization PAQ Research. This initiative is essential for improving the conditions of Roma pupils in so-called segregated schools so that all children get equal access to education. The memorandum includes a commitment to support school founders and principals in their efforts to improve the quality of education for all children.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia and Roma Schoolchildren

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Czechia and Roma Schoolchildren

School principals in Czechia received detailed instructions from government representative Lucie Fuková on how to proceed when determining the Roma origin of children. Some have been reluctant to count the Roma until now. By getting their numbers, the state aims to prevent segregation. Many of them do not agree with this census because they find it uncomfortable to proceed in this way.

The criteria are scary: These include, for example, appearance. If the child is perceived as Roma, the directors can infer his Roma origin. The same applies if one of the parents or relatives in the direct line is Romani, the child has a typical Romani name or surname, or the pupil or family directly speaks the Romani language or an ethnolect (a language variant associated with a specific ethnic minority).

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia: The Roma School

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Slovakia: The Roma School

Two articles in the Slovak press about this new initiative of a school where teaching will be done in Romanes. This is presented a good idea in Slovakia and esopecially so by the government. The result will be a segregated school whose standards will be rock-bottom.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia: Romani School

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Slovakia: Romani School

According to the articles, many children from the Podtatra  Roma community speak exclusively Romanes at home. When they start school, they may therefore have a problem with understanding the Slovak language. This is already a false premise, Roma are dual language speakers from early on.

The pilot project in the village of Rakúsy aims to improve this situation thanks to the first national school, where teaching will also be in the Romani language. In the village, 74 percent of the over 2,000 inhabitants claim to be Roma. The most used language is Romanes.

Well, this will result in a segegrated school, whose standards will drop, and will contribute to further marginalisation.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia: The Wall

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25 years ago, On October 25th, in the Czech town of Úští nad Labem, the local government built a fence made of prefabricated parts, which separated the Roma neighbourhood from the rest.

The structure, 1.8 meters high and 60 meters long, was removed after six weeks under pressure from the government and after protests by Czech and foreign human rights defenders, who saw it as a manifestation of racism.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Slovakia: Special Schools

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“Every teacher should teach at least one year at a special school. It will significantly affect his life both personally and professionally. It will acquire important values.” This is the advice for all teachers from the Slovak woman of the year 2021 in the field of education and the director of a unique school in Kežmark.

Unfortunately, this is a segegrated Roma school, and a pilot in Slovakia. This is not how integration is done.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

EU, Czechia and Roma

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The European Commission has sent a formal notice to the Czech Republic for failing to comply with EU anti-discrimination rules, citing the continued segregation of Roma children in schools.

The Commission has found that many Roma children are disproportionately placed in schools for children with disabilities or in separate classes, despite reforms aimed at ending the segregation of Roma children.

News Eastern Europe Slovakia

Education and Minorities

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An article about the issue of seggregated schools versus the right to being taucht in one’s language. Background is the current drive by the Fico government to set up a school in Eastern Slovakia where teaching will be done in Romanes.

This is a false debate. All Roma who speak Romanes are dual language speakers. They speak the local language and Romanes. Desegregation is thus the key here, together with some courses about Romanes. Segregation and Romanes only schools will certainly no solve any issue.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

A Diatribe

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Another one of those extremist Slovenians diatribes. This one claims a bias against Western Civilisation (when mentionning LGBT etc.). The article says that: “Left-wing politics, the media and non-governmental organizations have been convincing us for decades that they are a neglected ethnic group.”

Bad.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

Czechia, a Military Region, and Roma

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The story of a small vilalge called Květušín in Czechia, a village that was once German, and whose population was deported after the war, and became a military district. Roma settled there and the govrnment created a special school for Roma, promising children would be taken good care. The idea, however, was the create new people, and insulate them from their Roma background.

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: A Successful Settement?

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The local community of Pušča shows a rather different image of a Roma settlement compared to the Roma settlements in Dolenjsko. In the village there is a shop, a fire brigade, a football club and also a bookstore. The kindergarten, which has been around for more than 60 years, is especially important.

In the Romano kindergarten in Pušča, in addition to the teachers, there is also a Roma helper who makes sure that the children from the village get used to everyday life in the kindergarten as soon as possible.

Nice, but this is segregated schooling, which is not good.

 

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: Another View on a Roma Settlement

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We are not all the same, say the Roma at the community center in the Brezje Roma settlement in Novo Mesto. The coordinator for Roma groups at the DRPD, Elzana Adnan Odjoski, deals with them there. She runs a program aimed at teenagers and young mothers, in which young people from the age of 15 are involved.

The young mothers agree that their children should go to kindergarten, but not to a Roma kindergarten, but to a normal kindergarten, where they get to know other children and learn the language at the same time. They also said that “Some talk to us, some don’t even look at us, and some immediately run away when they see us”.

Czech Republic News Eastern Europe

School Segregation in Czechia

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In the Czech Republic, there are still 130 segregated schools where Roma make up at least a third of the students. Veronika Hlaváčová’s documentary brings the experiences of Roma whose children ended up in such classes and points to the vast differences in the quality of education.

“Normally, the teacher leaves us there and goes to the office because she has her child there. Completely disinterested,” describes Zdeněk in the documentary. He attends the eighth grade along with 14 other Roma. “We come to school, the teacher comes, we have mathematics and he tells us, for example, to write something down and we do whatever we want for the rest of the lesson,” he adds.

 

News Eastern Europe Slovenia

Slovenia: An accord

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In the town of Ribnica, in Southeastern Slovenia, Roma organizations and the management of the municipality met at a joint meeting. Among other things, they agreed that the municipality will provide drinking water to two settlements when the residents there meet a set of requirements. The municipality requires that Roma, among other things, be get involved in the integration process, send their children to school regularly, clean up the settlement and determine land boundaries.

In brief: So that the municipality provides a service that is due to all its residents, Roma have to fulfil some criteria. Especially the integration one, how will they measure that?

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