Government to ensure that girls from marginalized groups can
enjoy their right to quality education.
Across Central and Eastern Europe, discrimination and noninclusive education systems systematically deprive children
from Roma communities of their right to education. In some
countries, only about 20 percent of Roma children ever enroll in
primary school, compared with more than 90 percent of their
non-Roma peers. Those that do enroll are likely to drop out
before the end of basic schooling due to racism, in schools and
the lack of capacity of the education system to respond to their
special needs. In South-Eastern Europe, for example, only 18
per cent of Roma attend secondary school, compared with 75
per cent of the majority community, and less than 1 per cent of Roma attend university.
Many Roma children are found in 'special' schools and
classrooms for children with disabilities simply because of their
language differences. This leads to large gaps in the quality of
education received by Roma children and their non-Roma
peers.
Pre-school coverage for Roma children in South-Eastern Europe
is low, ranging from 0.2 per cent in Kosovo to 13 to 17 per cent
in Romania. This lack of access has been identified by Roma
NGOs as a major contributing factor in the educational failure of
Roma across the region. The World Bank (2010) notes that
educational enrolment in Central and Eastern Europe among
primary-school age Roma children is on average a quarter of the
corresponding rate for non-Roma children.
Even when Roma children gain access to primary school, dropout rates are high. In Slovakia, Roma children are 30 times more
likely to abandon school than the rest of the population.
In Serbia, only 13 per cent of Roma complete primary school. As
a result of the high drop-out rate among Roma children, their participation beyond primary school
is dramatically lower than that of the majority population. Educational achievement among Roma
is low. A Hungarian survey found for example, that the grade average of Roma pupils was lower