Transcript Document 7422082

Role of Communities in
Inclusive Education:
The Case of Roma Communities
Alexandre Marc
Roma Education Fund
What is inclusive Education?
• An education system where all children of different
culture, belief, socio –economic background, gender or
physical ability are given equal chances to reach their
maximum potential for learning and succeeding.
• A system where all children of the same age group study
together in the same classroom and follow a similar core
curricula, but where the school recognizes and respects
their different background and history.
• A system that reduces differences in education
outcomes instead of increasing them and aims at
building a cohesive and inclusive society more than just
to form an elite.
What is inclusive Education?
“Inclusive education is concerned with providing
appropriate responses to the broad spectrum of learning
needs in formal and non-formal educational settings.
Rather than being a marginal theme on how some learners
can be integrated in the mainstream education, inclusive
education is an approach that looks into how to transform
education systems in order to respond to the diversity of
learners. It aims to enable both teachers and learners to
feel comfortable with diversity and to see it as a challenge
and enrichment in the learning environment, rather than a
problem”. (UNESCO)
What are the components of an
inclusive education?
• Provides flexibility to the teacher to adapt its teaching to
the interests and preferences for learning of each child.
• Values all kinds of skills that students bring to class, not
just the academic skills, and it values differences in
children’s backgrounds as a richness and not as a
negative element.
• Favors solidarity and collaboration among children and
not individual competition
• Allows the community, parents, children and teachers to
voice their opinion and to be heard. Space for
deliberation and interaction between all.
Roma children are faced with
serious problems of exclusion
Approximately 80% of Roma children in Romania do not attend
preschool.
 While enrollment in primary education in Romania is 93% for the
population as a whole, Roma children account for approximately 80% of
the 7% who do not attend primary education.
 Although there are more than 200,000 Romanes-speakers in Romania,
Romanes is the language of instruction for fewer than 50 Roma from
grades 1 to 8.
 In Bulgaria, there are
exclusively by Roma.
106
schools
and
kindergartens
attended
 In Slovakia, the share of Roma children reported in special schools
exceeds that in regular schools by a factor of almost 14
 In Bulgaria, Roma children account for 20.6% of children entering
primary school, but only 7.2% of all students in grade 8.
Main issues with inclusion of
Roma in education
Economic
(Difficulty to finance parental costs of schooling.Distance
from school)
Administrative
(Ability to register, to meet all the requirements for
enrollment)
Lack of information
(Requirements for enrollment, understanding quality
education issues, understanding their rights)
Main issues with inclusion of
Roma in education
• Classroom environment not supportive to
Roma (Absence of references in the curriculum,
teachers not trained for diversity, very few teacher
assistants)
• Weak parents and community participation
(Parents are rarely invited to meetings with teachers;
parents are rarely told clearly about issues regarding
their children; parents have very little trust in the fairness
of the system. Roma community is rarely invited to
discuss with the school and the community)
• Lack of parents ability to provide adequate
home support
The components of participation
in inclusive Education
• Support to parents in home education
• Creating flows of information between the school
and parents to improve the quality and
effectiveness of the school environment and the
home support to the student
• Participate in decisions regarding the school
development
• Participate in decisions regarding educational
planning at regional, municipal and school level.
• Integrate the school in the community through
events and linkages with other community
initiatives
Why is participation so central
for the education of Roma?
• Overcome the lack of trust on both sides
• Improve the understanding of the specific child
environment in Roma families and in school
• Overcome the lack of representation of Roma in
local political systems
• Organize the additional support needed to
compensate for the various economic,
administrative and other issues.
• Set-up an effective out of school support for
education
A few simple instruments exist
• Representation and consultation at municipal
level (municipalities play an increasing role in
education)
• Organize schools to provide a space for
exchange between school and parents (School
Boards, regular parents-teachers meetings,
organized dialogue and debates with teachers
and headmasters)
• Use of mediators and community facilitators
• Create instruments and support for home
learning and after school learning (Tanoda in
Hungary, Roma NGOs in Bulgaria and Romania)
A few simple instruments exist
• Train school staff to understand the role
and importance of the community
• Use the school as a community center
around all aspects of education (health
education, information on administrative
requirements, adult education, youth
integration activities, sporting events).
But they are not so easy to
implement
• Need local political commitment
• Need backing and support from the central
education system
• NGOs need capacity and understanding of
educational issues
• Mediators need a supportive environment and
general recognition
• Help is needed to create adequate
representation of communities as Roma
communities are not homogenous
• Program needs to work also on the preparation
of a classroom environment for inclusion
What to do and not do
• There is still a very poor understanding of
community participation. Need to publicize best
practices and analyze why some approaches
work and others do not.
• Community participation can work for inclusive
education only if the government also works on
the other aspects of inclusive education.
• Participation needs to be nurtured and
developed through a local process. It can not be
ordered. It needs FLEXIBILITY
• Participation is political and therefore needs an
acceptance that people can help to improve their
environment through their own actions.