Survey of Elementary Schools Educating Roma Children - school year of 1998/1999The reason for the research
From 1971 to the school-year of 1992/93 the teachers evaluated the progress of Roma students in their annual reports in all elementary and secondary schools. From this period of time there are accurate data available about the number of the Hungarian Roma population in elementary schools and their rate within the whole population in the settlement.
In the academic year of 1993/94 the data collection of the Ministry of Education was abolished, consequently the examinations can be based on estimation.
All of the studies written for analysing the elementary education of Roma children, its position, failure, and the reasons for failure in the lower degree educational system, had to rely on - at least on national level - the last data recorded in 1993.
It looked necessary to plan and execute an overall research, which could give an account of both Roma children represented in elementary schools and the presence of a possible segregation (so-called "Gypsy- classes", over-representation in remedial education, etc.), and of its effect on the success/failure of ordinary education, and the special minority programmes in schools - all of these to be connected to the other characteristics of the school (region, measurement, finance, etc.).
The results in briefOur research focused on those primary schools in which the rate of Roma students exceeded 8,5% in the 1992/1993 school-year. Our data represent high-level statistical security, since they are based on the answer of the 36% of one thousand primary schools requested to take part in the survey.
The following topics are covered by the data collected at a national level during the school-year of 1998/1999.
o Change of Roma students' rate in the latest seven years.
o Relations between the rate of Roma students in school and the size of the settlement, the rate of Roma population in the given town etc.
o Relations between the school programmes (standard, remedial, special ethnic education), the rate of private students and the number of Roma students as well as the size of the school
o The relations between the number of Roma students and the school budget provided by the local government, the educational programme supply and the efficiency.
o The efficiency of the educational institute and the Roma opportunity to participate in secondary education.
Main statements of the examinationo The proportion of Roma children in our schools has been steadily increasing over the last six years by the average of 10 per cent, in harmony with the demographic trend.
o Schools that have a special education programme are largely schools with a high proportion of Roma children.
o Classes in the special education programme of the primary school (special groups and integrated classes) Roma children are significantly over-represented. This case of overrepresentation is strongly connected to the proportion of Roma children in the school, so theoretically it is independent of the possible individual causes of disadvantage.
o A special education programme, participation in remedial training programmes - or education based on a Roma minority programme - can be looked upon as alternatives when their distribution and the proportion of Roma children participating in such programmes is considered.
o The higher the proportion of Roma children, the higher the proportion of private students too. The majority (80 %) of private students are Roma in schools with a higher than 25 % of Roma pupils.
o The financial support schools receive from local authorities is not in proportion with the quota paid to local authorities. The amount of support does not correlate with need (e.g., the size of the school, the proportion of Roma pupils) and sometimes it is outright contrary to it. Irrationally, those schools receive the highest relative support form the local authority which do not launch any kind of special programme for Roma pupils. This is complemented by the phenomenon that the proportion of remedial training programmes launched in a school is in inverse correlation with the amount of financial support from the local authority - as if to "penalise".
o The amount of financial support paid to schools by the local authority and the effectiveness of schools do not show a connection.
o The effectiveness of schools is indicated solely by the secondary school admission rates. The chances of admission are considerably worse than average for Roma pupils, especially to grammar schools and secondary institutions which give a school-leaving certificate.
Roma pupils are admitted to secondary institutions most reliably when they have had attended a mid-size school or one without remedial training.Download the complete survey here
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