Policy on equity, and specifically on the education of Roma children, is an emerging topic. In this section, policy documents that have been developed by agencies, both local and international, non-governmental and governmental, will be gathered and posted for the user's reference.

This section also includes the work done by OSI Policy fellows that are working in areas related to the education of Roma children, and other relevant documents that have been created by OSI in the past on this issues

OSCE

BERLIN DECLARATION OF THE OSCE PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY AND RESOLUTIONS ADOPTED DURING THE ELEVENTH ANNUAL SESSION
(BERLIN, 10 JULY 2002)

The Parliamentarians of the OSCE participating states met in annual session in Berlin on July 6-10 2002 as the Parliamentary dimension of the OSCE to assess developments and challenges relating to security and cooperation in Europe, in particular confronting terrorism, and this declaration includes their views to the OSCE Ministers.

Slovak Governance Institute (SGI)

Roma Children in the Slovak Education System

The main ambition of this volume is to map the state of research and the availability of data in selected areas of access, participation, achievement of the Roma minority in the education system in Slovakia. The authors’ experience indicates that many research outputs dealing with this subject have not been sufficiently disseminated and are not available for other researchers and policymakers.

The Slovak Governance Institute (SGI) began to deal with the problems of the Roma minority in the education system at the beginning of 2002 within the project Removing Barriers to Education Mobility, supported by the Open Society Institute. Partnerships and cooperation with organizations whose experience in the field supplemented the think-tank orientation of the SGI were of crucial importance, particularly cooperation with the Milan Šimečka Foundation and the Roma Press Agency. Each new fact learned in the course of the project bore witness of the desperate situation, difficult search for solutions and particularly reluctance to deal with the situation at the national level. Yet, the worst of all has repeatedly seemed to be the fact that the data required to map the situation are desperately missing. Much of this publication will be devoted to the lack of reliable data on the particular problems of Roma in the Slovak education system. In spite of this shortage of data, even those, which are available paint a highly pessimistic picture. At the same time there are multiple causes for optimism: on the local level initiatives have emerged and shown good practice and individuals throughout the education system have with great devotion carried out great work with Roma children.

The current education policy is analyzed in the chapter by Andrej Salner. The next chapter provides a summary of the sources of official data on Roma in the Slovak education system. The chapter by Boris Vaňo provides information about the estimates of the actual number of Roma children in the education system as well as a projection of the pace at which this number should grow in the next years. Jana Tomatová’s chapter on the process of placement of pupils in special schools builds on her earlier SGI publication Na vedľajšej koľaji (Sidetracked). The chapter by Anna Dluhošová documents the present efforts of the State School Inspection concerning Roma children. Štefánia Košková analyses the role of non-governmental organizations in solving Roma-related problems. Martina Kubánová describes a newly introduced funding system for local schools and its possible impacts on Roma children. The chapter by Juraj Alexander and Peter Hodál analyses the present legal framework for solving problems related to the discrimination against Roma in the education system. The closing chapter by Laco Oravec discusses the possibilities for using measures based on positive discrimination in order to solve the problems in question.

National Institute of Public Education
Budapest, Hungary

Team-leader: Silvia Németh
Team members: Dániel Horn, Zoltán Hermann, András Kádár, Attila Papp, Ágnes Székely

Funded by The World Bank, Open Society Institute – LGI The Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative

July, 2003

Hungarian Roma Education Policy Note

The purpose of the present paper is to reveal the basic features of segregation and introduce the principle of integration of Romany pupils into the Hungarian education system. Based on the ideas collected by the help of stakeholder workshops we try to define the objectives of “integration” within the Hungarian context, in order to identify reform options, as well as specific policy, legislative and school-financing changes needed to achieve these goals.

OSI

Education Policies for Roma: A Way Forward

Policy brief prepared for the conference "Roma in an Expanding Europe: Challenges for the Future"

June 30 - July 1, 2003