Dispute over segregation of Roma children
The analysed facility is simply a tiny primary school located at the ft of Carpathians in east Slovakia. On the eve of the general elections at the end of September, it became the subject of a national debate. The ultimate Court ruling in Bratislava and the intervention of Brussels contributed to a increasing interest in the full situation. shortly there will besides be a proceeding before the European Court of Justice.
What is it, though? To realize that, we request to go back to what happened earlier this year. In February, the Slovak ultimate Court ruled that the principals of the Kičrova school allowed segregation of Roma children. This led the European Commission to announce its intention to mention Slovakia to the European Court of Justice in connection with widespread infringements of the equality directives. The court case is being prepared by officials in Brussels and this may be a blow to the governments of Hungary, the Czech Republic and Croatia, where discrimination seems to be common. However, this is simply a very complicated issue, on which there are no simple solutions.
Moreover, on September 30, Slovakia is going to the elections with Robert Fico, a populist sympathetic to the Kremlin, who had previously called for the end of the "tolerance" for the Roma community. It could mean his return to the Prime Minister. Slovakia is so on the verge of change.
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Activists say that this socio-economic isolation of the Roma drives the education system. Roma children were placed in peculiar classes for people with “intellectual disabilities”. This was allegedly based on diagnostic tests carried out in Slovak alternatively than Roma. Activists believe that the procedure was deliberately utilized to make Roma children accomplish the lowest possible results. In any cases, separate school zones, frequently deprived of the most basic equipment, have become “only for Roma”.
The principal's opinion and the grey reality
Viera Kičrova, the school principal, is afraid about the current situation. However, he realizes that children are not liable for specified a situation. Her goal is, as she said, to aid them, regardless of their skin color. The Director's concern is besides due to the fact that she is now moving the facility in the languages of European politicians and journalists. It is shown as a model of the school the EU intends to fight.
The Roma community from Podstawek lives on a neglected settlement where houses are half built and wooden huts seem to be crowded. Next to these houses is the Kičrová school, consisting of 2 buildings. 1 is old and built in 1937, the another is simply a modern two-story structure made of containers.
All 400 children attending school come from this settlement, but parents who are not Roma send their children to school across the river. The school has no cafeteria or gym, and absenteeism is high. little than a 5th of the students passed exams in mathematics and Slovak at the end of the school.
The NGO Poradňa drew attention to this facility in 2014, erstwhile it was decided to build a fresh school building for the increasing Roma population. The organisation has won respective cases concerning discrimination in Slovak courts. Legal work on schools began many years earlier, and the programme coordinator in Poradňi compared the situation in Slovakia to a groundbreaking 1954 case in the US, which declared school segregation unconstitutional.
Roma in Slovakia
With about 9% of the population identified as Roma, corresponding to about 500,000 people, Slovakia has 1 of the largest Roma communities in Europe. Their life from birth to early death is frequently characterised by poverty. The life expectancy of men and Roma women is 7.5 and 6.6 years shorter than in the general population of Slovakia. fresh investigation shows that little than a 5th of people over the age of 16 work.
A fresh survey by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights shows that in Slovakia, 65% of Roma pupils aged 6 to 15 attend schools where all or most students are of the same cultural group, an increase of 5 percent points compared to 2016.
Interestingly, the school studied was not always based on cultural divisions. Stanislav Relovsky, who erstwhile attended the facility, described what discipline had previously looked like.
My class counted 7 white children and 14 Gypsies. If it worked 30 years ago, why can't it work now? There was no argument between us, and now I have no problem going to the Gypsy settlement. Today, for example, my own children don't know Gypsies. It's not the parents of white children who won't go to school with Gypsies, but the full strategy is bad.
