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Czech Social Inclusion Agency director says EdMin is the weak link in Romani children's schooling

22 October 2012
5 minute read

Martin Šimáček, the director of the Czech Government Agency for Social Inclusion in Romani Localities, gave an interview to Rádio Impuls last week on the inclusion of Romani children at elementary schools and the role of the Agency. A partial translation is below:

Moderator – Václav Moravec: When you read the Council of Europe’s report on the integration of Roma in the Czech Republic, the one the Council of Europe’s Human Rights Commissioner published at the start of March, what struck you most of all?

Guest – Martin Šimáček: I consider that report to be pretty balanced and I was struck that the Commissioner was drawing our attention in particular to the area of education. He pointed out that the education system in the Czech Republic is not yet inclusive, it does not facilitate the inclusion of socially disadvantaged children in particular into mainstream education. The report also described the situation in family policy and foster care for children very well, in those areas I believe the report is very well-written.

Q: It has to be said that the Czech Republic has been criticized over the situation in the education sector and its inaccessibility to Romani people for a very long time, this is nothing new. Isn’t it a bad report card for the Czech Republic that it hasn’t progressed in these areas?

A: Partially yes, but at the same time I must say that during 2008-2009 in particular the Czech Education Ministry set up a group for social programs in education and at that time the discourse at the ministry significantly changed. Measures were developed to support inclusion, new key decrees were drafted which were supposed to get disadvantaged children into mainstream education. Unfortunately, the policy now is different from then. We are currently negotiating rather intensively with the new leadership at the ministry, with the relevant bodies there, and we believe the decrees I just mentioned might take a form which could at least partially facilitate the inclusion of disadvantaged children into the mainstream. Potentially this could mean a small revolution, in the sense that many fewer disadvantaged children will be enrolled in the “practical” schools, schools which originally were intended to educate children with light mental disability. Thanks to those decrees, that should not be possible again, and….

Q: Do I understand correctly that until you succeed in negotiating those new decrees, the Education Ministry has been the weak link?

A: I have to say the ministry has been the weak link… the National Action Plan somehow remains unfufilled, the group of 100 experts that was set up to launch it has met only once so far. We will very carefully follow whether that program is launched at all, because if it is launched, it would naturally mean that the steps in the right direction will continue.

Q: Is there money for that? There’s not even money for ordinary nursery schools, we know there are not enough to meet demand.

A: I believe all the measures we are discussing will open up a certain room for financial savings, for example, in the per capita financing of children, in the sense that some of the higher existing per capita expenditures [for “special needs” education] will not be necessary and will be reallocated for equalizing and support measures.

Q: You mean that when the money is all brought together into one place, everything will cancel out?

A: Yes. Nevertheless, as far as preschool preparations and other measures in the elementary schools go, such as much more massive support for teaching assistants, psychologists, and the others who are now missing from the schools, or who are only there in very small numbers, I believe it will be essential to increase financial support for those measures. It’s a question for the Government, whether it will be willing to pay attention to that.

Q: The Government Agency has worked so far in 23 towns. Rougly two months ago, you announced you would be leaving nine, or rather seven, of them. You left one almost immediately, Holešov, in Moravia (basically in protest, let’s say), and then you left another six municipalities: Brno, Broumov, Přerov, Slezská Ostrava, Roudnice nad Labem and Jesenicko. Have any of those places where you announced you were ending called you up since and asked to come back into the program?

A: We are leaving some of those places because we believe we did a good job there and some sort of sustainability has been established. Other places we are leaving because we simply could not reach agreement with the local leadership. That is a completely different policy – we simply did not succeed in seeing through inclusive measures. In Holešov, which you mentioned, the trend is so segregational that we were simply unable to convince the municipality to ameliorate the measures it was taking, measures that basically resulted in the eviction of those people into one-room container housing on the outskirts of town, which is completely unacceptable, but to answer your question….

Q: Isn’t it the case, though, that when you leave a place everything will just return to the old ways of doing things after a while? Isn’t that the main problem?

A: The situation can naturally revert to the old ways, but then again, the entire situation might also completely change even in the middle of our working somewhere, for example, if there is a changing of the political guard after municipal elections or when key bureaucrats are replaced. Of course when we are working somewhere, we are one of the important forces acting in favor of inclusion, but our aim is to educate, or to help educate and perfect the know-how of those who are on the scene and are responsible for the situation. We cannot make up for the lack of responsibility of local representatives. We can help get the situation under control, that’s what we’re here for.

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