Aspects concerning the social and educational integration of the Roma

di? Daniel Mara, Sorina Corman

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Social policies addressed to the Roma population within the social services system

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The legal stipulations related to the principle of equality in front of the law exists in any modern constitution, and most of the strategies in the field of minority protection promoted the equality of chances in education, employment, culture etc as well as the right to difference of the individual, of the group and therefore of the minority (Miftode 2004, 110).

Actions such as abusive confiscation of the assets or forced assimilation were characteristic for Romania before 1989 affecting pretty much the life of the minorities. However the finality of these actions was not their destruction. After the fall of the communist regime, under the pressure of the EU and of some organizations of the minorities, the aim of protecting the minorities was a major one in the social policies of the country (Corman 2008, 492). Moreover, the Government Strategy concerning the improvement of the situation of the Roma population starting from 2002 was elaborated in 2001. This strategy presented a 10 year programme, with a plan of activities for four years starting from 2002. It contained a detailed analysis of the situation of the Roma population, suggesting measures to solve or diminish a large range of problems of the Roma minority such as the living standard, health, social protection, employment, justice, education, culture and communication, fighting against discrimination, representation of the population in various structures of the local and central administration. In the work Public Policies for the Roma population. Evolutions and Perspectives it is shown that (Ionescu, Cace 2006, 53) ?The most significant strategies regarding the Roma population (Strategy of improving the situation of the Roma population ? G.D. no. 430/2001, National plan against poverty and promoting social inclusion, which has a special chapter addressed to the Roma population, Joint Inclusion Memorandum, National strategy of employment etc.) were achieved by a collaboration between the Roma leaders and various specialists, the results of the studies and the indicators making up an essential reference system having in view the substantiation of the priorities, the objectives and of the targets of the above mentioned strategies?. Unfortunately the results of their implementation were not the ones expected.

Important phases in the evolution of the Romanian social policies are represented by the establishment of the Council for the National Minorities (CNM) in April 1993 and of the Department for the Protection of the National Minorities (Dp NM) in 1996, ruled by a delegate minister belonging to UDMR which contains in its structure a National Office for the Roma population as well, (Center of Resources for Intercultural Diversity 2005, 10-14), and in the year 2004 of the National Agency for the Roma population. This one coordinates monitors and evaluates the measures from the fields of social intervention, contained in the Romanian Government Strategy of improving the situation of the Roma population. These responsibilities are however very general and cover large and various fields leading to possible superposition with ministries and agencies with prerogatives in the field (Presidential Administration 2009).

From the researches regarding the social problems in the Roma communities in Romania comes out the fact that the majority of the Roma communities are confronted with such problems as unemployment, low level of education or the lack of property titles over the land (Voicu and Precupetu 2007, 223).

One of the conclusions of the Analysis of Social and Demographical Risks made in 2009 by a presidential board made up of experts from the field of social policies is that: ?Two specific risks characterize the Roma minority in Romania: all of them are confronted with discrimination and a disproportioned large part lives at the outskirts of the contemporary society? (Presidential Administration 2009, 205).

As to the discrimination of the Roma population, the National Council for Fighting against Discrimination is the only institution which, according to the report of the same presidential board actively assumed the fight against discrimination, including the discrimination against the Romanian Roma citizens. However its role is limited, keeping to ascertaining the existence of the discrimination facts and to making recommendations and complaints for the competent authorities (Presidential Administration 2009, 211).

Nowadays in Romania, the Strategy regarding the reform in the field of social assistance 2011-2013 describes the Romanian system of social assistance as being inclusive, with objectives which treat the minority population undiferentiatedly (including the Roma population) on the macro system level on one hand, while on the level of the micro system the intervention is a specific one for each individual. This strategy outlines the social assistance system as being the whole of institutions and measures by which the state, by the authorities of the local and central public administration, the local community and the civil society intervene for the prevention, limitation or elimination of the temporary or permanent effects of certain situations which could generate the social marginalization or exclusion of a person, family, groups or communities¹.

Its mission is, according to the same strategy, the development of the capacities of the individuals or of the communities to solve their own social needs, as well as to increase the living standard and to promote the principles of social cohesion and inclusion.

At the county level, the County Councils: ensure the necessary frame for delivering public services of county interest regarding: social services for the protection of children, disabled people, old people, family and other persons or groups in social need? (Law no. 215/2001 of local public authorities art. 104 paragraph (5), letter a), point 2) therefore also valid for the Roma population in difficulty. Subordinated to the County Council there is the General Direction of Social Assistance and Child Protection having the role of coordinating the policies in the field of social assistance at the county level. It has, according to the Law of the national system of social assistance, the following duties:

a) elaborates and implements the strategies and plans of action at the county level, according to the national strategies and plans of action in the field, as well as to its own programme of communitarian development;

b) initiates and applies measures of preventing and fighting the situations or marginalization and social exclusion and ensures the solutions for social emergencies;

c) coordinates the foundation, organization and furnishing of social services according to the identified social needs, ensuring a fair covering of their development all over the county, and gives technical and financial support to sustain them;

d) suggests the foundation and administrates the specialized social services, directly or jointly or by dealing with other public and private authorities and public institutions, association forms of the civil society including religious institutions recognized by the law involved in the development of the social assistance programmes;

e) gives support to the local authorities, with a view to developing and organizing social services;

f) ensures the activities of information, training and counselling, with a view to increasing the performance of public services of social assistance at the level of the local councils of the municipalities, towns and villages;

g) monitors and evaluates the social services founded and administrated;

h) elaborates and implements projects with national and international financing in the field;

i) gives the necessary technical assistance for the creation and forming the consultative communitarian structures, as a form of support in the social assistance activity;

l) elaborates and submits to the County Council the annual budget

for the support of the social services and other measures of social assistance, according to its own action plan.

At the local level, within the town halls and subordinated to the local councils, there are Public services of social assistance/ departments of social assistance having in view the child and family protection, protection of the old people, disabled people, homeless people, protection of the persons and families with small income. These structures have such objectives as: ensuring high quality social services, flexible ones, observing the general standards in the field; keeping the beneficiaries informed on the given social services; collaborations with the public institutions and Non Governmental Organizations, by achieving partnerships, projects and programmes of fighting against social marginalization; implementing programmes of preventing social marginalization, risk situations and addiction to the social protection system.

As it can be noticed from the description of the role of the institutional structures in the field of protection of the persons in need, the Roma population, according to the norms in force, can take benefit from all the facilities offered according to the social problem they are confronted with. Unfortunately, the resources invested in this field are still insufficient and this leads to the breaking up of the system and its dysfunction at certain levels.

In Romania the decisive role in supporting the Roma population belongs to the Non Governmental Organizations in the field. These are about the only ones which managed to obtain visible results in ensuring the rights of this category of vulnerable population even if the support of the non governmental field is insufficient and the Non Governmental Organizations have great material and financial difficulties.

In the future public policies addressed to this category of the population the new strategy of the Government should rely on an authentic, constant political assuming of the policies of equalization of the chances for the Roma minority. A real partnership with the representatives of the civil society is necessary in order to obtain sustainable results (Presidential Administration 2009, 211).

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Steps of educational integration of the Roma students

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Efforts in order to educate the Roma students as a necessary phase in their social integration in Europe are made by all the countries of the continent which face a difficult reality that can negatively influence the dynamics of a world whose essential option is civilization.

In the Decade Report of Roma Population Inclusion 2005-2015, accomplished for the first two years it is mentioned that the main problems that the Roma population is confronted with are the access to a job and dwelling conditions, while in the field of education and health remarkable progress has been recorded. Racism and discrimination towards the Roma population has been strongly manifested lately, so the European deputies emphasized the fact that education and integration of the Roma population are priorities in dealing with the problems of this minority. In the educational field there have been implemented a lot of projects, programmes, strategies of supporting and stimulating the process of integration in education and society of the Roma population. One of these strategies refers to the activity of counselling the Roma families regarding the access to education and culture (Mara 2008, 159).

The problem of educating the Roma children is one of the priorities of the Romanian educational system, especially after the 90s, an evidence of this fact being the numerous intervention strategies with a view to the social and educational inclusion, as well as the various projects made up and implemented having the same purpose.

Many of these projects considered the situation of the Roma children as being children in a situation of exclusion, of marginalization. The premises were the following:

- one of the most unfavourable categories of children are the Roma children, who need a lot of support to surpass their condition;

- the poverty of the Roma families, the prejudices which continue to exist in their mentality, the indifference of some of the Roma parents regarding the perspectives offered to the children by education, lead to the marginalization of the Roma children, to the limitation of the access to equal chances that all children should have.

- In Romania only 20% of the Roma children attend kindergarten in order to be prepared for school, 20% do not attend any form of education, 30% leave school before the end of the junior secondary school and 50% are illiterate or semi-illiterate.

Therefore these statistics justified the necessity of educational projects and programmes in order to integrate the Roma children in the educational system. Before any intervention strategy there were identified the main factors which could have a decisive role in the process of social integration of the Roma population. These are: the educational system, the mass-media, the social assistance, and the decision factors at the government level. The co-ordinates which represented landmarks in the educational intervention strategies took into account the specific of the Roma culture and tradition and had as its objective connecting the Romanian educational system to the values of the European culture and civilization. We can mention the following co-ordinates:

- the traditional organization of the Roma population in close communities (isolation); social marginalization; self marginalization; the existence of social, racial and cultural prejudices;

- the racial and anthropological particularities of the Roma population: native racial talents (speculative intelligence, artistic talent);

- the manifestations of racism of the majority community

- the cultural specific of the Roma population: Roma language; specific socio-cultural mentality;

- the negative tradition manifest by: inadaptability; breaking of the law;

In front of these characteristics of the Roma population the only acceptable and possible alternative was a coherent and permanent policy of preventing marginalization and of integration. In the process of integrating the Roma children school has a fundamental role by promoting the specific values of an intercultural paradigm and of an inclusive school.

The inclusive school is the ?school for everybody?, which promotes the lack of any labelling, classifications, categories and forming hierarchical systems of its students? values and performances. The inclusive school ensures a high quality education for all its students, in another sense than the one existing in the general school. The atmosphere of an inclusive class is an atmosphere which cannot be replaced by any furnishings, competences, strategies or resources.

All the children of a community have access no matter what social strata they come from. In this institution there are children with special needs in education, and the curriculum is a specific one (individualized and adjusted). The didactic activities can be made in partnership by the class teacher together with the itinerant/support teacher and during their development other specialists in special education and parents can be involved.

The inclusive school involves the idea of reforming-changing the school and society in general in order to adjust to the necessities of a future society (?a society for everybody?), which shall better adjust to the needs, potential and aspirations of all the children including those who cannot face a common school.

The inclusive education is meant to continuously adjust the school to the special educational needs of the children. The inclusive education is achieved by eliminating the barriers in learning and the participation of all those who are vulnerable to exclusion and marginalization by a strategy meant to facilitate the necessary education for all the children (Vrasmas 2001).

A first requirement of the inclusive education is the decrease to elimination of the exclusion from education, at least at the elementary level of education. The inclusive school is the basic school, accessible, a high quality one which is addressed to all children, and changes them into students and gives them the ability to work with the basic knowledge and abilities.

Another requirement of the inclusive school is that of offering the bases of the human culture and civilization so that everybody can beneficiate from them and to develop them in their own way. The teaching-learning strategies must be adjusted in order to correspond to the diversity and innumerable styles of learning and development of children (Mara 2009, 82).

The general principles that the inclusive education suggest, mentioned by the National Association for the education of the children with special needs in Great Britain ? NASEN, 1999 are the following (Ungureanu 1999):

- the principle of equal rights. Every human being has the right to a social and intellectual personal development and ought to have the opportunities to achieve his/her own potential of development;

- the principle of oneness. Each human being is unique. Each human being is unique in characteristic terms, interests, abilities, motivations and needs to develop;

- the principle of diversity. Another educational system has to be designed so that it should take into account the whole diversity it involves.

- The principle of access and participation. All those who have special needs/requirements of learning and/ or disabilities ought to have access to an adequate and high quality education.

The inclusive education refers to improving the learning activity. The didactic process is linked to the life and learning context of each child and therefore the need of a partnership between the teacher and the student, between students, between teachers and between the family and the local community as well.

All these characteristics of the inclusive education have been valued in the activities developed and in those in development within the implemented projects which aimed to the social and educational inclusion of the Roma children.

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Results obtained as a result of the implementation of some projects of educational integration of the Roma children

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Here are some data regarding the attendance of school by the Roma students, correlated with the studies in their mother tongue Roma or of the classes of the language and history of the Roma population.

Connected with the existent data for the year 1990, the number of Roma students increased from 109,325 (preschool children, students classes I-XIII), at the end of the academic year 2006/2007 to 263,409 Roma students (7.43% related to the total of 3.5 million preschool students and students in pre university education).

At the same time there was an increase of the number of Roma students who chose to study the Roma additional curriculum -made up of 3-4 classes per week of the Roma language and traditions at the level of classes I-XII, i.e. from the class of Roma history and traditions for classes VI and VII or those who completely studied in the Roma language in the academic year 2006/2007, 9,81% Roma students supplementary studied the classes of the Roma language and history or in the Roma language from the total number of Roma students who were attending school (i.e. 25,525 from 260,105). At the end of the academic year 2007/2008 the number or Roma children who studied Roma language ( or in Roma mother tongue) increased to 26,805 ( out of which 320 learn only in their mother tongue, at kindergarten and primary school) (Sarau, 2008,pp.177-178).

Table ? Schooling of Roma children compared to the teaching of the Roma language and history during the period 1990-2008

Academic year	No. of Roma students with Roma identity assumed	No. of students who studied the language and/or Roma history and traditions or completely in the Roma language
2007/2008	263,409	26,805 out of which 320 studied completely in the Roma mother tongue
2006/2007	260,105	25,525 out of which 140 studied completely in the Roma mother tongue
2005/2006	243,008	24,903
2004/2005	220,000	24,129
2003/2004	183,176	20,528
2002/2003	158,128	15,708
1989/1990	109,325	50

In conclusion we can say that the results obtained after the implementation of some projects for educational integration of the Roma students are significant. These steps have to continue even if the economic, political and social obstacles appear and most of the time decrease the rhythm of these activities of support and inclusion of the Roma children. The education of the Roma children implies a special approach in which the initial data of this population can be a starting point for finding solutions to the problem of their integration.

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Bibliography

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Badiu A. ( 2008), National system of social assistance today, Agnos, Sibiu.

Corman S. (2008), Social services for minorities, in Badiu A. (coord.), National system of social assistance today, Agnos, Sibiu.

Ionescu M., Cace S. (2006), Public policies for the Roma population. Evolutions and perspectives, National Agency for the Roma Population, Bucarest.

Macavei E. (2008), Gypsy/Roma population: realities and perspectives. Asocia?iunii ASTRA, Sibiu.

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Mara D. (2009), Didactic strategies in inclusive education, 2nd edition, Didactic and Pedagogical, Bucharest.

Miftode V. (2004), Sociology of Vulnerable Populations, University Publishing House ?Al. I Cuza?, Ia?i.

Sar?u G. (2008), Successful Programmes of the Ministry of Education, Research and Youth concerning the education of the Roma children, in Macavei E.(coord.) Gypsy/Roma population: realities and perspectives, Asocia?iunii ASTRA, Sibiu.

Presidential Administration (2009), Social risks and inequities, Presidential Board for the Analysis of the Social and Demographical Risks, Bucharest.

Resource Center for Etnocultural Diversity (2005), Minorities in transition. Report regarding public policies in the field of the national minorities in Romania.

Ungureanu D. (2000), Integrated education and inclusive school, de Vest, Timisoara.

Voicu M., Precupe?u I. (2007), Diagnosis of the social problems in the Roma communities and strategies of communitary development, in Voicu M. (coord.), Needs and resources in the Roma communities, Soros Foundation Romania, Bucharest.

Vr??ma? T. (2001), Integrated and/or inclusive education, Aramis, Bucharest.

Zamfir C., Zamfir E. (1993), Gypsies between ignoration and worry, Alternatives, Bucharest.

- HG nr. 430/2001 regarding the approval of the Romanian Government Strategy of improving the situation of the Roma population.

- Law nr. 47/2006 concerning the national system of social assistance

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Footnotes

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