Every day at 7 o’clock in the morning, school busses are parked at the square of the Roma neighbourhood of Kyustendil. Children run to the bus stop from all corners of the neighbourhood– some accompanied, some alone – and jump on to the bus which will take them to their school. The school mentors check off the children’s names on the attendance list and the short daily trip begins to the city center, where Roma children study together with ethnic Bulgarian children.
The project “For better education” has been ongoing for more than ten years as a desegregation initiative implemented by nongovernmental organizations. The aim of the project is to bring Roma students out of the segregated Roma schools and into mainstream mixed schools, where they can sit at the same desks with their Bulgarian peers, see new opportunities and receive quality education. Transportation is a key factor, as there is no public transportation in Kyustendil and the Roma quarter is a few kilometers away from the city center, surrounded by a wall from the one side, which the locals call “Berlin”. The official explanation for the barrier is noise-proofing, but the residents believe that it was built to hide their houses.
Over time, the municipality of Kyustendil become an active participant in the educational project and currently the city ensures the largest share of funding. The remainder is financed by Roma Education Fund, which is responsible for the project inception. The local partner NGO, Center for regional development “Roma”, also plays a very important role with the implementation of activities on the field. Over the last school year more than 300 students from 1st to 12th grade travel every morning to the city schools, and 20 preschool aged children are bussed in to city kindergartens. After school, they visit extra classes in Bulgarian language and mathematics, as well as different extracurricular activities, based on their interest at the office of the local partner organization.
The mentors are seven experienced and trustworthy people from the Roma community who accompany the students on the busses, check their school attendance, talk to parents, and organize home visits and community events. Additionally, mentors do outreach work to explain to potential beneficiaries and families the benefits of attending school in the city. Although parents are worried at the beginning about the challenge of the daily commute to the city, more and more are visiting the office of the local partner organization to learn about the schools in the city where they can enroll their children.
The national external examination results show that when Roma students study together with non-Roma students, their achievements are higher; and the integrated classroom does not in any way affect negatively on the achievements and education of non-Roma children and students.
The segregated schools in the Roma neighbourhoods lack the proper classification of being an educational institution as they do not ensure a quality education. Year after year, the external national examination finds that the segregated school in the Roma neighbourhood of Kyustendil ranks last in student performance. Despite the weak results, nearly 600 students are still enrolled however they do not attend school regularly . “We are really thankful for this opportunity to send our children to city schools. Our neighbourhood school is not a school. It is a kind of center where the children are gathered. There is no learning and education process there. You cannot understand when they have class or when they are on break”, says a local mother. According to European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the proportion of Roma children in Bulgaria attending schools in which all schoolmates are Roma is 27%[1]. Unofficially, between 40-60% of Roma students and children are enrolled in segregated schools or kindergartens. There are roughly 70 segregated schools in urban areas and absenteeism and lack of textbooks and notebooks seems to be standard practice in such institutions. Many students drop out during the primary years and if they finish secondary education, they are not adequately literate and have difficulties entering the labor market.
Much attention is paid to innovative pedagogical approaches and active communication to bring together students, parents and teachers in the Kyustendil schools, including regular coordination meetings with school principals, municipal representatives, local community members, parents and grassroots NGOs, including the regional office of Ministry of Education and Science. “We do not have any dropouts, except the ones who left the country with their families”, states Sasho Krastev, chair of the partner NGO which coordinates the neighbourhood activities. According to him, all schools in the city are open to enrolling Roma students. Currently, there is no school without Roma students. With REF support, the municipality created a methodology in order to avoid the so-called “white flight”, which can lead to segregated schools in the city. The idea is to have between 5-10 Roma children start first grade every year in each school.
Petar Paunov, Mayor of Kyustendil Municipality emphasis the need to institutionalize the project. He states, “To date, the Municipality of Kyustendil is continuing the technical and financial implementation of a number of measures related to the continuation of the educational integration process started by “For Better Education” project. Nevertheless, despite the initiative of the local authority, such a long-standing process requires the development and implementation of a regulatory mechanism developed at national level, by which to ensure the involvement of all local authorities in the implementation of Roma integration, but also to ensure strict monitoring by the state.”
Many mothers bring their children to preschool activities at the venue of the local partner organization, where they can play with educational toys, read books and just spend some time with other children and parents, along with a person who is specialized in assisting the parents with these activities. The motivation of parents to allow their children to attend a city school out of the neighborhood starts at an early stage. “You cannot go a day before the official start of the school year and ask to enrol the child in the city. It is a very long and challenging process” says Mr. Krastev. He continues, “It looks very easy but needs significant efforts. Sometimes we have to solve many personal issues in order to convince the parents. As we can see at the national level, many Bulgarian parents do not want their children to be classmates with Roma. Many Roma parents see this on the news, so they are afraid for their children. We are happy that, due to our work, the situation here in Kyustendil is calmer. I am not saying that we do not have difficulties, but at least we do not have any extreme cases like in many other localities. In this regard REF support is crucial – for the municipality and for the local Roma community”.
[1] Second European Union Minorities and Discrimination Survey (EU-MIDIS II) Roma – Selected findings
