ETUCE_Newsletter

Background

In Europe, more than seven million Roma are in a very difficult situation. Moreover, in recent decades, the issue of Roma children’s education has been neglected by most Governments. In autumn 2003, the Dutch member organisation AOb drew ETUCE’s attention to the lack of education of Roma children in Central and Eastern Europe. The ETUCE decided to react to this discriminatory situation and submitted a proposal for a project to the European Commission, approved in spring 2004 named Developing non-discriminatory quality education for Roma children.

Project description and aims

Developing non-discriminatory quality education for Roma children consists of two phases: a preparatory phase (6 months) and an implementation phase (2 years). The aim of the preparatory phase was to analyse the situation of Roma children in Bulgaria and share these findings with Slovakian and Hungarian colleagues in order to identify common problems. This part of the project was successfully carried out from March to August 2004.

The preparatory phase identified two aims to be achieved during the implementation phase :

• To raise awareness and build capacities at trade union, authorities, parents and educators’ level in order to

enhance the quality education of Roma children

• To contribute to changing policies and legislation in accordance with the EU Antidiscrimination Framework

Activities

To achieve the aims, the following activities were planed for the implementation phase of the project:

• Launching Conference – where the legal aspects on how to combat discrimination in the three countries targeted were discussed, as well as the role of teachers’ unions concerning the education of Roma children. The main aim of this conference was to seek commitment from relevant actors and stakeholders (mainly trade unions-authorities).

• Legal seminars were held in the three countries (Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary) with the participation of trade union officials and members, local authorities, Roma parents, lawyers, etc. The aim of these seminars was to raise awareness on the basic concepts and attitudes that discrimination implies, and to study the legal measures to combat it.

• Training of trainers’ seminars were carried out in the three countries, with the participation of educators working with Roma children, trade union representatives, authors of school textbooks, etc. The aim of the seminars was to train 75 trainers in total - 25 per country - who then committed themselves to train 10 colleagues in the methods.

• Trade union workshops in each country exclusively for trade union members. The aim of these seminars was to discuss and elaborate the trade union’s National Action Plan on Roma children education.

• A final conference in Bratislava, September 2006. The aims of the conference were mainly to present and discuss the National Action Plans and to conclude on the project results. Further, the Conference came to a decision on a Conference Statement which outlines the future commitment from the national unions and ETUCE in the area of improving the situation for Roma children’s access to education.

Outcomes

Working closely together with the teachers’ trade unions in Bulgaria, Slovakia and Hungary on improving the situation for Roma children in education has been a very positive experience for ETUCE. Committed union representatives and teachers dedicated to their work and the improvement of the situation for Roma children’s access to education took part in the project. This ensured that the project aims and objectives were reached on schedule and in a satisfactory way.

Most importantly, the trade unions developed National Action Plans for each country, with concrete suggestions and actions on how to improve the situation of Roma children’s access to quality education. The final aim of the process initiated through this project is to ensure that Roma children can enjoy equal access to education. An important element in this process towards equal access to education is the capacity of teachers to approach and deal with different cultures in the classroom. During the project, tools to increase teachers’ capacity to teach multicultural classes were developed and 750 teachers were trained in these tools.

Documents

Download documents related to the project:

Brochure (2007) - summarising all phases of the project Developing non-discriminatory quality education for Roma children :

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