“From the very first day of the school year, when all the pupils line up in rows of two-by-two for the first day of school ceremony, the Roma children were put aside into their own group. A Roma child held the hand of another Roma child, without the students mixing. We as children were not able to understand this back then, but our parents did notice the segregation.”
The story above is just one example of a situation which persists in various countries across Europe: educational segregation. To address the continuing lack of access to mainstream education faced by many Roma children, the European Roma Rights Centre recently launched an online campaign against school segregation.
To access an updated ‘European school segregation map’, and to find out more about how you can contribute to the campaign, please click here.