Prague, July 24 (CTK) – Roma children often experience segregation in education, according to a 2016 report which the Czech government debated on Monday and which says Romanies constituted some 4 percent of students in the 2015/16 school year, but 15 percent in special (practical) schools.
The report says almost one quarter of Roma boys and girls attended an elementary school in which Roma children represented a majority of their fellow students.
“Roma students often meet discrimination and segregation, and they are often educated outside the major education stream where they are taught according to a programme with a lower education ambition,” the report says.
The Czech Republic has long been criticised by both domestic and international organisations for segregation of Roma children and their sending to “special schools” destined for children with various levels of mental disability. One of the annual critics is Amnesty International.
In 2007, the European Human Rights Court convicted the Czech Republic saying it breached the right of 18 Roma children to education when it transferred them to special schools and that it discriminated against them.
In 2015, the MPs passed an amendment to the law on education and rules for including children from other environments in regular schools. They have been applied since September 2016. Experts say the inclusion and assertion of the change will take some time.
An estimated total of 33,860 Roma children attended elementary schools in the school year 2016/17, which was 3.7 percent of all students in the country.
About 15 percent of Roma children, or more than 4900 attended special schools “with a lower education ambition.”
Roma children constituted 30.9 percent of students with a light mental disability and 9.4 percent in special schools for children with a more serious mental disability.
“Schools often reject Roma children unofficially. Head teachers do not make a written decision, they only announce that the student cannot be admitted because the school’s facility has been exhausted. This also happens in kindergartens,” says the report referring to the ombudsman’s information.
Ombudsman Anna Sabatova previously criticised the segregation of Roma children.
The biggest number of schools with more than 30 percent of Roma students are in the Moravia-Silesia and Usti regions, where there is also the highest unemployment.
Almost one third of them are in underprivileged localities, mainly in the Olomouc and Moravia-Silesia regions.
The students, their parents or other representatives, the school inspection and social workers can ask the National Education Institute to review the inclusion of a child into special classes.
