Roma Education Fund is organizing two additional consultations with Alumni and current Roma students (beneficiaries) on the Future of Roma Education. The meetings will take place online, via Zoom, on April 28th and May 02nd 2023. We are inviting REF’s Alumni and current students (beneficiaries) to take part in this reflection process to register.
April 28th
Students (beneficiaries) Consultation, 17.00 CET – REGISTER HERE
May 02nd
Alumni Consultation, 17.00 CET – REGISTER HERE
Your feedback and insights will be collected during the consultation dialogues. You may also send them in writing to consultations@romaeducationfund.org.
Roma Education and REF: Consultation Paper
- Background
Poor education is both a cause and an effect of the vicious circle of the marginality of Roma and their low engagement in public life. For this reason, education has been the top priority for Roma policies, funding and projects for the EU, international donors and national governments that have intended to improve the situation of Roma communities. It was with this understanding that the Roma Education Fund (REF) was created in 2005.
To this day, formal education systems fail to include Roma children or to provide inclusive and quality education. They also fail to adequately address the cultural dimension, history and social dynamics regarding Roma as a constituent ethnic group of European states.[1] A healthy sense of Roma identity―instead of feelings of inferiority and shame―based among other factors on a solid knowledge of Roma history, culture, language and contributions to mainstream society, is a precondition for engaging Roma in public life to make progress for their immediate communities as well as broader communities and society overall.
The latest report of the EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency shows devastating results across 10 EU countries,[2] including the following:
- The proportion of Roma who felt discriminated against when in contact with school authorities increased over the past five years.
- School segregation increased for children aged 6–15.
- The proportion of Roma youth aged 20–24 who completed at least upper secondary school remained largely at the same low level.
The root causes of these problems date back to the 19th century, when mass education was introduced to promote the idea of national belonging and to nurture the skills necessary for newly developed industries. During the last 30 years, our societies have been destabilized by social, economic and political transitions and crises, resulting in growing exclusionary nationalism. As a result, we still face low quality of educational support, especially in majority-Roma communities, the lack of proper investment in school infrastructure, neglect by teachers and ignorance. Roma remained strangers or second-class citizens within their own states, and the material and conceptual precarity of educational institutions reflects this social and political reality.
2. The Roma Education Fund’s approach
The major approach in the past—which REF invested in along with others who have worked on Roma education with national governments—was to “desegregate” schools providing low-quality education to predominantly Roma pupils by closing them and/or busing Roma children to “non-Roma” schools, hoping that an ethnically diverse environment would offer better individual opportunities for development. This approach, however, has proven to be inefficient for Roma students and, to some extent, even more harmful by exposing them, as unwanted “guests,” to direct forms of racism.
While REF alone is not responsible for this situation, it is legitimate for the organization to scrutinize its own work as the biggest non-governmental actor in this area during the last 17 years. REF created interventions based on the hope that “closing the gap in educational outcomes between Roma and non-Roma” would happen as a result of desegregation and through scholarship programs that would be scaled up by national governments. Based on this assumption, REF developed various models and projects that certainly made some positive contributions. As an indication, some progress could be registered in the area of education, as opposed to other priority areas, during the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005–2015.
However, given (1) the worsening realities of Roma communities, (2) the political and policy environment of growing ethno-nationalism and decreasing political will for pro-Roma policies, (3) the crises in Europe generated by the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine exposing severe economic and energy vulnerabilities, and (4) new opportunities emerging as responses to global challenges―such as the green and digital transitions―REF needs to step back and review its overall strategic assumptions in a context that is so different from when the organization was conceived.
Since its establishment, REF has gathered considerable experience in successful project management and implementation, has developed innovative models and approaches, and has nurtured relationships with key stakeholders. To use available resources in a more effective way and to achieve results for Roma communities on a larger scale than the project level, REF’s leadership is committed to thoroughly reconsidering the organization’s theory of change and strategy.
3. Considerations for REF’s future strategic orientation
Based on the brief contextual analysis presented above, REF has been considering the following changes:
- Our mission should change from “to contribute to closing the gap in educational outcomes between Roma and non-Roma”to “building resilience though education”. This approach would involve nurturing human resources with a mindset of community progress―as opposed to individual success only―with the aim of multiplying our efforts and investments.
- REF needs to become a center for innovation, applying new methods and digital technologies to connect Roma communities with current possibilities and trends in education and employment.
- Our focus in providing educational services, assistance, policy advocacy and research should be directed towards larger Roma communities across Europe, from which efforts can be extended to the national level and beyond, if relevant.
- For higher impact, our efforts in targeted localities should be aligned with investments by other credible Roma and pro-Roma actors in the areas of entrepreneurship, employment, arts and culture, civic education and engagement, and so on.
- The promotion and use of Roma language, history and culture needs to become part of our efforts to nurture the next generations of educated Roma. Building pride, self-confidence and a sense of belonging among future generations of Roma leaders and advocates is key to improving the situation of Roma communities in the mid- to long-term.
- We should build on REF’s good experiences to further improve engagement and ownership by Roma families and communities. Instead of being seen as beneficiaries, community members should be involved as partners in our commitment to educational development and building resilience. Those engaged in our activities, therefore, should also contribute their own resources (time, labor, financial, in-kind) to our mutual commitments.
- Our interventions need to be informed by knowledge and research based on state-of-the-art analytical tools.
4. Next steps
As part of our strategic reflection process, we are inviting key stakeholders for a consultation on the future strategic direction of the Roma Education Fund. As part of this effort, we invite your contributions regarding the following questions:
- At the macro level, what are the key threats and the main opportunities for reversing the tendency toward worsening educational outcomes for Roma?
- What should be the role of REF in these undertakings?
- What do you see missing from the above-listed considerations regarding the future strategic orientation and approach of REF?
- How do the new considerations relate to your strategic and funding priorities for the years to come?
Responses will be collected orally during consultation dialogues with stakeholders and may also be sent in written form to consultations@romaeducationfund.org.
[1] See the report commissioned by the Council of Europe to the Georg Eckert Institute in partnership with the Roma Education Fund entitled “The Representation of Roma in European Curricula and Textbooks. Analytical Report” at https://repository.gei.de/handle/11428/306
[2] https://fra.europa.eu/en/publication/2022/roma-survey-findings
