Macedonia

Project Title:
Support equal access to quality education for Roma!

Carried out by:
National Roma Center (NRC), Macedonia

Timeline:
December 2008 – August 2009

Output:

Documentation and analysis of the roundtables

Project description

The project is designed to challenge the social exclusion of Romani children in education that prevails in Macedonia, and to bring about positive changes through roundtable meetings and public promotion in the area of education.

The implementers of the project believe that poverty can be eradicated only if strategic actions and advocacy are undertaken in the sphere of education for Roma children. Actions are needed to promote public interest for social inclusion. State institutions, such as the Ministry of Education and its representative bodies on the local level, municipalities, local Roma representatives, authorities on fact finding and Romology studies, the media and the wider public are all important actors in such efforts.

The four roundtables organised during this project will engage these constituencies, and the NRC will prepare reports on the basis of these roundtable meetings to reflect their input.

Prilep, Stip, and Skopje have been chosen as locations for the roundtable meetings because of the large number of Roma in those towns and because Skopje, as the capital city, is where the Ministry of Education and other relevant government and educational institutions are based.

The NRC will use the roundtables in its advocacy for access to quality education for Roma children in Macedonia. The roundtable meetings will serve to facilitate discussion about the current situation in municipalities and schools and to gather additional estimates and facts. They will raise awareness of the information and data presented in the EUMAP/OSI report Equal Access to Quality Education for Roma (EAQER) and are meant to further the implementation of the report's recommendations.

The roundtable meetings will raise important issues concerning Roma education in Macedonia, the new Law on primary education and Roma, enrollment of children, quality of education, discrimination and segregation in schools, how to tackle these obstacles and how to use the EAQER report for Macedonia to improve the education of Roma.

On the basis of the recommendations from these roundtables and the EAQER report's recommendations, the NRC will prepare an overview of the current status of Roma education in Macedonia and propose further measures to advocate for policy changes in the country.

The roundtables

The first three roundtable meetings were each attended by 30 participants, which included relevant representatives for education from the municipality, schools and local level institutions of the Ministry of Education, as well as Roma parents.

• The first roundtable meeting was organized in Stip on 4 February 2009 and was attended by participants from Sv Nikole, Stip, Kratovo, Veles, Radovis, Kriva Palanka, Delcevo, Vinica, Berovo, Kratovo and Kocani;
• The second roundtable meeting was organized in Prilep on 3 March 2009 and was attended by participants from Bitola, Prilep, Kavadarci, Resen and Negotino;
• The third roundtable meeting was organized 19 May 2009 in Skopje, and was attended by participants from Gostivar, Tetovo, Debar, Kicevo, Ohrid, Skopje and Kumanovo.

The fourth roundtable meeting was organized in Skopje at the end of June, and focused on Romology studies in Macedonia. Representatives from state institutions, relevant ministries, university faculties for language and pedagogy, embassies, and the EU were invited to attend.