Inclusion of Roma Children in Schools

The contribution deals with the role of education in inclusion of Roma children. Education is a right for all children, regardless of cultural and social background. The Roma are still marginalized socially and educationally. In addition to low educational attainment, which is a consequence of segregation of Roma children, school dropout is also a problem. The inclusion of Roma children in schools is a challenge for many countries as Roma are discriminated against because of their ethnicity. Ensuring an inclusive school and environment is, among other things, an obligation imposed by many international instruments. The introduction of Roma assistants is an important step in promoting Roma inclusion in schools. However, different researches on teachers' attitudes towards Roma children shows that their willingness to work with Roma, needs to be strengthened. In our contribution, we intended to explore teachers' views on Roma inclusion in schools. We aimed to use the literature to explore and present the current situation and good practices in Roma inclusion in schools. This contribution focuses specifically on the analysis of results, gathered in the project RoMigSc. The empirical research is part of survey RoMigSc which was conducted in 2019 in Slovenia, Italy, Spain and North Macedonia. We were interested in teachers' views on the inclusion of Roma in the school, how much teachers consider contributing to more inclusive schools, or whether teachers participate in campaigns to raise awareness of Roma issues. The quantitative methodology used in the contribution was the RoMigSc project questionnaire, which was carried out in 2019 in Slovenia, Italy, Spain, and North Macedonia. Analyses show that there were statistically significant differences between the responses of teachers and other respondents on claims related to inclusion of Roma. More than other respondents teachers agreed with the claims that Roma students are socially well-integrated in schools; and that other students and parents do not want to interact with Roma students.