Education is the essential driver of cultural, economic and socio-political progress of our societies. In my understanding, education systems hold the role of knowledge maker and transferor, but in addition, it makes important contributions to the creation of public opinion, values and cohesion of the society. Such a multi-layered function of the education system is quite challenging for the key actors working in the field of education, including REF, as no single organization/institution has sufficient resources to address the systemic complexities or shortcomings.
Since its establishment in 2005, Roma Education Fund (REF) has become an important actor on many fronts: supporting Roma communities, schools and teachers, as well as influencing the responsiveness of policy makers and donors. The main tool REF has used is cooperation, combining constant/consistent dialogue and financial support to children, parents, teachers and officials overseeing education. The proof of REF’s influence derives from our long-term presence and established collaborative setting with hundreds of municipalities, thousands of students and parents at all educational levels. In addition, REF-supported graduates have steadily taken over the responsibility and became active members of the Roma-rights agenda. REF has backed the ambitions of Roma students, raised awareness of their parents, sensitized the policymaking actors’ rationale, as well as increased allocation of institutional and donors funds for educational programs/projects for Roma.
Looking back
REF has been a changing organization since its establishment, which is an important quality that enables REF to be an effective and efficient organization. Since 2006, REF expanded its direct presence in a number of countries – establishing country foundations in Hungary (headquarters through 2019), North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia (headquarters starting 2020) and Slovakia, in addition to the parent foundation in Switzerland – and have consequently shaped our governance and management choices at the level of Network of REF Foundations. REF’s mission and vision has been framed in REF strategies, including the latest one targeting 2030 goals and objectives.
Since 2016, the Fund has applied a matrix management culture, bringing together the work of head office departments and national foundations. Currently REF’s priorities and interventions are defined by centralized governance and in-country development needs in education, where the demand and specific country priorities are formulated by country foundations and partners. Such an approach brings together both macro and micro perspectives, in which first-hand information from the field is the most important factor in shaping our operational decisions. In other words, flexibility was always the strongest quality in our work, including readiness to adjust our interventions in a relatively short time.
REF has been very successful in designing efficient interventions that produce results which are similar to mainstream educational attainments. We needed five years (2005-2010) for piloting and testing different models and methods, as the Roma Decade for Inclusion’s ultimate goal was to assist governments in finding workable model interventions and help in transferring the knowhow within mainstream education systems. This was not a simple task as, in the meantime, the political and economic changes across Europe shifted away the attention of governments and consequently distanced them from promises made within the Decade initiative. Knowing that governments would not buy into-in the REF models, it was decided to keep the partnership with ministries of education, and finance jointly programs which are in line with educational reforms in respective countries. Good practices for institutional partnerships can be found, for example, in North Macedonia through two multi-year programs in preschool and secondary education. These projects have had significant institutional ownership in the past four years, both from financial and administrative aspects. Funds for preschool and secondary and university scholarships are regularly budgeted by the state, in which REF contribution decreased between 30% to 40%. I want to make it clear that these efforts are done in direction of transferring the institutional ownership of REF branded model interventions. The quality and inclusiveness of education systems is the responsibility of the state and its institutions, meaning that REF is open to assist and contribute to this goal together with other key stakeholders.
A personal perspective
Roma organizations and REF have repeatedly voiced that Roma children are not properly served, nor treated by the teachers in the schools. It is very rare to find sensitive and knowledgeable teachers for dealing with cultural and learning differences of children. In the case of Roma, the cultural difference is transformed to disadvantage the pupil and serves as the primary source for discrimination. Children’s insubordination and behavior are easily qualified as incompatible, irrespective to the learning talents or potential that could have been manifested by Roma pupils with the right support. Besides being subordinated, Roma children have to cope with intimidating school environments. You can find a broad range of labels for Roma among mainstream parents and children, ignorant teachers and school principals as well in ghetto schools.
Teachers’ bias, low expectations, ignorance and prejudices reproduce systemic discrimination, segregation and low educational attainments. In addition, Roma parents’ participation and interactions with teachers and school principals is very poor. I myself experienced teacher’s bias in primary school:
My parents enrolled me in a so-called “elite school”, where I stayed only two months in the first grade and my grades were mostly 2 and 3 (5 being the best). One day, an order came from the school principal to move out all pupils who belong to other school districts. First on the list was my name. My parents couldn’t and probably didn’t know how to challenge such a directive. At the end of the day, it was only me who had to change the school. But this turned out to be a blessing, as in the new school I had an excellent teacher who was an unbiased professional. My grades there were 5 in all subjects until graduation and continued with excellent grades in high school. This is a typical example of the importance that the attention and objectivity of the teacher in the success of pupils’ schooling. In my case, one-off discrimination of an elite school enabled me to have better treatment and a fairer teacher in the “average” public school. The grades I had couldn’t be disrespected by professors at higher levels of education and in the meantime my self-confidence and learning discipline were fully in place so I could challenge the bias of professors.
The responsibility we all have…
As REF’s support is of a technical and financial nature, every single beneficiary holds the responsibility for maximizing their own personal learning progress! Young Roma must find inner strength and inspiration: strength to fight discrimination and different treatment, and to diminish emotional vulnerability and victim sentiments. Inspiration can be taken from many examples of resilience, but it is important to couple the inspiration with taking leadership responsibility, to demonstrate and multiply success stories with next generations. REF mission has always been for people, which aims to enable and shape REF beneficiaries’ actions for a new cohort.
Meeting scholarship graduates has been a great pleasure for me and a big learning opportunity to “touch and see” the effects of our work and, of course, learn about the ambitions and commitments of the students vis-à-vis Roma rights. I am convinced that we have bright and well profiled graduates in the countries we work in, very eloquent in articulating their vision for the future, and enthusiastic in setting their personal goals and ambitions. They are a great potential for the communities they belong to and have huge potential for realizing REF’s mission into tangible impact. I am confident that REF, RIO, ERRC, ERIAC and many other pro-Roma organizations have to closely cooperate and coordinate their program activities in order to structure this potential into different forms of human capital.
We have also realized that graduation and degrees are not enough to change the social status of Roma, as the forces of exclusion and prejudices are stronger in the business world. REF scholars should aspire to attend and get the best quality of education, but also to embrace the culture of life-long learning. Intellectual capital becomes successful if backed by social capital and recognized by vocational and professional networks. REF and young Roma intellectuals have a common mission and shared responsibility, both moral and social, to use any single opportunity for contributing to collective needs and interests.
… for moving forward
I strongly believe that REF models continue to contribute to the inclusivity of schools as the practices we apply have influenced the attitudes, behaviors and relationships within the teacher-parent-pupil triangle. As we have been doing this for more than fifteen years, we have wide-ranging evidence that confirms better access and learning achievements of REF beneficiaries. It demonstrates that each pupil benefits if properly engaged and treated in the classroom, no matter of the cultural background. It is logical to expect that this quality will continue in the future, as the current critical mass of REF educated beneficiaries set higher educational ambitions for the next generations.
This article was written by Nadir Redzepi, the Executive Director of Roma Education Fund from January 2016-February 2020
