What are the scales of educational segregation and what are the possible actions to overcome it. Deyan Kolev from the "Amalipe" Center for Inter-Ethnic Dialogue and Tolerance spoke to FAKTI on the topic.
- Mr. Kolev, in the center “Amalipe“ for a long time you have been working on the topic of the scale of educational segregation, the ways of overcoming it and the overall development of school education. How educational segregation happens and when we talk about it…
- Segregation is one of the most serious problems facing school education in Bulgaria. It has been around for decades. Even at the beginning of the communist period, schools were built in some Roma neighborhoods. For obvious reasons, they were completely segregated. In the first years of their existence, they played an important role in the literacy of Roma children and parents. Over time, unfortunately, the quality of education in them has proven to be lower. Due to the requirement of zoning, that is, that children attend school in their own district, segregation was widespread, as a large number of Roma lived in separate neighborhoods and attended neighborhood schools. In the early 1990s, the requirement for zoning was dropped. The expectation of the Roma activists at that time was that this would help with the rapid desegregation, since even then many of the Roma parents wanted their children to be educated in a school outside the neighborhoods - together with Bulgarian children. Unfortunately, this happened to a very small extent.
Although thousands of Roma children were and continue to be enrolled to be educated outside the Roma neighborhoods, the alarming practice shows that as soon as a given school has more than a quarter or a third of minority children, Bulgarian parents quickly deregister their children and enroll them in another school.
Thus, today we have dozens of “secondary segregated schools”, which are located in neighborhoods with a population of the Bulgarian ethnicity, they were once ethnically mixed schools, but today they are attended only by Roma students.
- Can you distinguish regions in the country where segregation is most characteristic…
- Unfortunately, the problem is present throughout the country. However, it is particularly concentrated in large regional cities. Exceptions are cities without segregated schools. A good example is Gabrovo. Until 2018, there was a secondary segregated school there, but the municipality made the wise decision to close it and distribute the children to all other Gabrovo schools. From Center “Amalipe” we supported the process actively because we worked with the Roma parents. Despite the difficulties, desegregation succeeded in Gabrovo and today there is no segregated school there.
- And how do you explain it?
- As I indicated - there are two prerequisites. One is the presence of large separate Roma/minority neighborhoods in some of the cities. It is natural that segregated schools also arise there. The second serious prerequisite is the withdrawal of the children from the majority of schools in which a larger number of Roma children are enrolled. This is mostly due to stereotypes and prejudices of some parents who believe that the quality of education will fall, discipline will deteriorate and their children will receive a worse education. There are many examples that this does not happen and I can point to many ethnically mixed schools where the learning process is at a very high level and the children receive a very good education – both in terms of academic achievement and social-emotional competence. But there is a lack of a targeted campaign at the national and municipal level to fight stereotypes and stop secondary segregation.
- Are all educational institutions affected – kindergartens, general education schools, professional and profiled high schools…
- According to the Ministry of Education and Culture, there are general education schools with a concentration of vulnerable groups and vocational high schools with a concentration of vulnerable groups in the cities. There are no profiled high schools with a concentration of vulnerable groups. In 2020 “Amalipe” and the Ministry of Education and Culture conducted a study on segregated educational institutions and we saw that almost everywhere ethnic segregation coincides with the educational status of parents and schools with a concentration of vulnerable groups (the Ministry of Education and Culture perceives as such schools where parents have less than secondary education) are and segregated schools in the ethnic sense of the word. In 2020, 120 general education segregated schools and 64 schools in the process of segregation were functioning in the cities. Among vocational high schools, the picture was 78 segregated PG and 82 in the process of segregation.
- The MES has information on the concentration of vulnerable groups. What are the main factors that determine this process…
- MES provides this information on the basis of the "Characteristics of the environment" map, which all schools and DGs submit annually through the NEISPUO system. This card shows the educational status of the parents. According to the Financing Ordinance, schools and elementary schools with more than 20% of parents who have less than secondary education are institutions with a concentration of vulnerable groups. They are divided into 5 groups according to the percentage of parents with low education. As I indicated above, this categorization largely covers segregated schools and PGs.
- What can we say about segregation regarding the ethnic nature of the parents…
- Unfortunately, we observe an almost complete coincidence between schools with a concentration of parents who have low education and schools with a concentration of Roma students. The latter does not mean that all Roma parents have low education. But it is a fact that many educated Roma parents prefer to enroll their children in schools with students from the majority and with parents who have a higher education. This creates serious challenges for teachers who teach in segregated schools. They must have high-quality education, but the latter is difficult to achieve if there are primarily children from families with low education.
That is why it is particularly important that the Ministry of Education and Culture and the municipalities take decisive measures for desegregation.
All of us, as a society, have an interest in schools being ethnically mixed and in educating children from families with different educational status, social status, ethnicity. The school should be like the society. This is how we will raise children who are prepared for life, because they will meet people of different ethnicities and different socio-economic status in it. The sooner the municipalities (let's not forget that all primary schools and part of the vocational high schools are municipal) and the Ministry of Education and Culture takes action on desegregation, the better
- What is characteristic of segregated educational institutions in large Bulgarian cities…
- I want to make an important clarification that WE DO NOT CONSIDER RURAL SCHOOLS AS SEGREGATED, even if only minority children are educated in them. In many villages, Roma and Turks are the only young population. We have been convinced by experience that these schools are more open to pedagogical innovations and do not have the appearance of a segregated school. We talk about segregation in the cities – where there is more than one educational institution teaching in the relevant stage. I don't want to generalize about all urban segregated schools, but in general, in most of them the dropout rate is high (there are examples of children who have been abroad for years to be enrolled as students), the results of the Higher Secondary Education and Higher Education Institutions are low, discipline is also poor and there is often no real learning process. Of course, there are also segregated schools that do not fit this picture.
- What are the main models of segregation and give important and successful examples of desegregation…
- Early intervention is most successful. When secondary segregation has not reached all classes and there are still classes that are ethnically mixed, municipalities and schools can take a number of measures. I can give two examples as successful models:
"Traiko Simeonov" SU, town of Shumen, had started on the path of secondary segregation. Although it is in a Bulgarian quarter, mainly Roma students had begun to enroll there. Galina Sakarova became the director of the school a few years ago – a very motivated and caring teacher. She sought our assistance and decided to implement the change we were proposing – introduction of intercultural education, activation of students, involvement of parents (including formation of parents' club, appointment of educational mediators, etc.) It was especially important that the Municipality of Shumen also supported the process and made a serious repair of the building, equipped offices, so that the school did not differ from other urban educational institutions.
The change has occurred – in the last three years, both Roma and Bulgarian children (I mean children from the majority) have been enrolled in the first grade.
Another example is the Municipality of Gabrovo. She closed the secondary segregated primary school “Tsanko Dyustabanov“ and distributed the Roma students in absolutely all Gabrovo schools. A year later, there was a threat of secondary segregation of another school, as only Roma students were enrolled there in the first grade. The municipality made the unpopular decision to make zero admissions to this school, but not to allow a segregated class.
Desegregation there took place with great effort. From Center ”Amalipe” we actively worked with Roma parents to convince them that their children would be safe in ethnically mixed schools and would not be discriminated against. We appointed mediators who made sure that the students were at school on a daily basis. The schools provided additional training to the children from the former "Tsanko Dyustabanov" elementary school. So the process worked.