At the end of the year, the State School Inspectorate sent us a report on an inspection carried out at a primary school in Svidník, where they found segregation in Year 5. In addition, they found that in Year 6 pupils were being separated into non-Roma and Roma groups in mathematics and Slovak language lessons. The School Inspectorate assessed the situation as segregation of Roma children in education, which the school must eliminate. 

We decided to talk directly to the parents of Roma children about their perception of the situation and to monitor the education of Roma children in this town.  We visited an excluded Roma community that lives on the outskirts of the city in three container flats. 

What we found:

The school districts in the town are set up so that Roma children living in apartment buildings attend different elementary schools in the town, precisely in order to eliminate their education in one purely Roma school. 

If there is also a Roma class in one year at a school, this is a temporary solution in order to overcome the learning gap of children who attended primary school in another municipality in the first instance, and then the children are educated together.

Some Roma children from neighbouring villages also attend a special school. Some of them have doubts about the legitimacy of such inclusion.  

On the basis of the information we have found, it appears that the town as the founder of primary schools has set up school districts in such a way that the segregation faced by some members of the Roma minority in housing does not translate into segregation of Roma children in education. This is a path that should be followed by other towns where the Roma minority lives in segregation. 

We thank the Roma men and women for talking to us about the situation in their locality. We will continue to monitor the situation in the locality.