Social Services Management in the Context of Ethnic Roma Issues in the Czech Republic with a Focus on Education for Roma Children

Abstract

According to qualified estimates by sociologists, the Czech national census and governmental bodies in the EU, as many as 350,000 ethnic Roma people live in the Czech Republic. Yet, only a fraction of the Roma population has received higher education and are achieving careers within and not alongside the majority society. Some believe that a more inclusive and integrative approach in education will facilitate long-term community work and better removal of prejudices. This represents quite a force that could appreciably affect the political landscape. Unfortunately, we run into the disunity of the Roma people among themselves, which brings more challenges to the forefront rather than solutions to the current status quo. This should change in the future. The current government concept for this purpose supports the development of Roma culture and education. This overview study should bring more arguments to the table regarding the need for Czech Romani/Roma intervention in education and social affairs. This overview article gives an insight into current Czech Roma/Romani education and social service-related issues.

Formal education vs. informal education in the Roma community—a silent confrontation where nobody wins

“…The Roma children are often, in several European countries, victims of indirect discrimination, which takes the form of segregated education, ending up learning in special schools or separate classes (O'Nions, 2010;Cviklova, 2015). When segregation occurs, the quality of the educational act is less qualitative, the school having weaker facilities, financial and human resources, compared to ethnically mixed schools (Merhaut et al, 2022). In Slovakia, for example, the percent of Roma studying in segregated schools or classrooms exceeds 60% (Jurco, 2023).…”

“…According to Rutigliano (2020), existing evidence indicates that a significant proportion of Roma children do not attend school at a level that corresponds to their chronological age. Therefore, increasing the educational achievement of Roma is a key priority in the field of combating their social exclusion (Merhaut et al, 2022). Also, across Europe, Roma tend to live below the poverty line, in precarious housing, without access to health care and adequate food, with high child mortality rates (Klaus and Siraj, 2020), children tending to be the most marginalized from an early age, facing stereotypes, discrimination and exclusion (Sakamoto et al, 2022).…”

“…This study investigates and compares for the first time the perceptions of formal and informal education of adult Roma members and how these might differ by gender and influence the decision to enroll them in school. In this way we focus directly on the main protagonists, covering an important criticism pointed out by Merhaut et al (2022), namely the ignoring of Roma culture and the views of its people. This information is valuable as it could explain the low schooling of Roma, especially girls, and the failure of Roma schooling programs.…”