News

On November 4, 2013 the Ministry of Education and Science hosted representatives of Roma organizations to share best practices and ideas to be used in the new law on secondary education. The meeting was the initiative of the Directorate "Access to education and supporting development" and CEICSEM. Among the invitees were representatives of CIEDT "Amalipe", Center for Public Policy and Advocacy, Association "Organization Drom", several active Roma organizations and representatives of MLSP.

On the first of its kind meeting were discussed issues such as:

- the study of Romani as a mother tongue in schools and the need for the issuance of such textbooks. It turned out that there were developed national standards for Roma language, but there were not yet developed teaching materials. MES is ready to open emergency procedure for writing textbooks in this extracurricular activity if teams of authors engage in writing books;

- Not to differentiate classes with children of only one ethnicity, if there are students from different ethnic groups studying in one settlement;

- Standard for intercultural education;

- Students who have interrupted their education or have dropped out of the education system ( and are older than 18 years) may have the option in single form of training to make educational content from several academic years in one ;

Among the ideas that Center "Amalipe" offered and believed that they have proved good results at schools, was that each school should develop an individual program to reduce dropout from school, taking into account local circumstances.

Attendees NGOs supported the idea that teachers should communicate better with Roma parents about their children's education.

All of the attendees decided that there was a need of a second workshop.

Atanas Kouzmanov

Regional Coordinator

Educational team