Roma education conference highlights best practice and future plans

Eastern Europe's largest conference on the education of Roma children took place in Budapest, Hungary, on April 2-3, 2007. The conference was organized by the Roma Education Fund (REF), in collaboration with the Hungarian government.

The overall objective of the conference was to review progress made on Roma inclusion in education systems in the Roma Decade countries in the past two years. The conference aimed to assess the progress made in the enrolment and attendance of Roma children in the region, highlighting the fact that progress is slow. Recent education policy changes and their impact on the education of Roma children were on the agenda. The conference had four specific objectives:

1. To review progress achieved by the respective governments since the launch of the Decade of Roma Inclusion
2. To engage in discussions on the recent challenges in improving education systems and policies to better address the Roma education outcome gap
3. To identify best practices from programs implemented the last two years and discuss directions for effective scaling up

Ministers of education, high-level officials representing the Roma Decade countries, delegates of Roma civil society, academics and researchers, European agencies concerned with social issues, as well as representatives of bilateral and multilateral donor agencies participated in the conference. They discussed the achievements and the lessons learned since the launch of the Decade of Roma Inclusion in 2005, which was aimed at reducing Roma exclusion in Eastern European countries within a ten-year framework. The Decade was an initiative developed by the World Bank and the George Soros Foundation.

Since 2005 REF has launched 65 projects in 13 Eastern European countries aimed at improving the integration of Roma children in the region’s education systems. The conference called for an increased commitment of all stakeholders and in particular government to sustain some of the small progress of the past years and urgently scale up

For more information on the conference visit: www.romaeducationfund.hu

New OSI reports on access to education for Roma ask for more than promises from governments

The Open Society Institute released the monitoring volume “Equal access to quality education for Roma” on April 2, 2007. The volume of four country reports covering Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania and Serbia presents a comprehensive analysis of basic educational indicators as well as of the main constraints and barriers preventing Roma from obtaining full access to quality education.

The reports were launched in the framework of the "Education Reform to Support Roma Inclusion" conference convened by the Roma Education Fund in Budapest. They were researched by local teams in each country monitored, and produced by OSI's EU Monitoring and Advocacy Program (EUMAP), in cooperation with the Roma Participation Program (RPP) and Education Support Program (ESP) of the Open Society Institute.

The monitoring reports paint an alarming picture: in the four reviewed countries most Roma children face disadvantages in every aspect of their education. Some Roma children never enroll in the education system while others are shunted into segregated schools or classes where the quality of education is invariably lower: lower standards in the curricula, poor human and material resources allocated, low expectations of teachers, materials used in the classroom which often reflect prejudice and bias.

The reports do note that governments participating in the Decade of Roma Inclusion 2005-2015 have energetically adopted policies and programs to improve education opportunities for Roma. In particular, National Action Plans were drafted in the framework of the Decade, of which education is one of the four main focus areas. Yet in the first two years of the Decade, governments in the four monitored countries have scarcely found their bearings on the enormous task lying ahead.

Policy recommendations included in the country reports address in detail how governments in the reviewed countries can improve the ability of central and local structures to implement vital strategies. They highlight the importance of preschool education in ensuring equal chances for Roma children. They also invite governments to capitalize on the good practices that have been developed. Finally, the recommendations also stress the importance of data collection to ensure informed policymaking.

The reports are available online at www.eumap.org/topics/romaed. Reports on the other five countries participating in the Decade of Roma Inclusion (Croatia, Czech Republic, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Slovakia) are due later in the year. To receive a hard copy, use the publication order form at www.eumap.org/puborder For further information, contact EUMAP (eumap@osi.hu) or Miriam Anati, EUMAP Advocacy Manager (manati@osieurope.org)

Ukrainian national examination reform receives $5 million support from U.S. government

The International Renaissance Foundation (IRF) Ukraine and the Education Support Program (ESP) invested substantial human and financial resources into a testing project, which advocated fair and transparent entrance examination reform in higher education institutions in Ukraine over the last 6 years.

In the past few years, the Open Society Institute (OSI) and IRF worked in partnership with the American Councils for International Education (ACCELS) to continue offering technical support to the Ukrainian government in introducing standardized external testing as a mandatory criterion for university admissions. In April 2007 the U.S. government provided $5 million to the American Institutes for Research and the American Councils for International Education: ACTR/ACCELS (Ukraine) to contribute to building a testing system.

The testing project of the IRF started in 2001 with technical support from ESP. The first certified testing was conducted in 2003. Since then, the number of school leavers has increased year by year (2003: more than 3,000; 2004: 4,500; 2005: 9,000; 2006: 42,000; 2007: 120,000). Initially there were only 3 universities that were committed to fighting corruption at the tertiary level through introduction of external exams. Over the years the number of universities which accepted the results of these examinations expanded despite strong interests in keeping up the existing bribery and malpractice.

In 2004 the Testing Technologies Center, established by IRF to implement the project, prepared recommendations on the introduction of the external examination reform for the government with technical assistance from ESP. This document formed the basis of a decree on the introduction of external testing and quality monitoring issued by the Cabinet of Ministers in 2004. This was the real breakthrough in the fight against corrupted practices during entrance examinations to tertiary institutions. Additionally, the results of the pilot project initiated by IRF/OSI were scaled up and became the basis for the government reform. The practice of oral examinations during entrance exams to tertiary institutions which was open to manipulation and malpractice was to be gradually substituted by standardized examination. This process of reform accelerated after the Orange Revolution.

A presidential decree of 2005 declared that transition to the external examination system for university entrance should be carried out in 2005-2006. The subsequent Cabinet of Ministers` decree stated that 2006 should be experimental year and 2007-08 should be transition years for the external examination reform to be implemented nationwide.

In 2006 the Ukrainian government introduced a national examination reform, which linked secondary school leaving exams with higher education entrance exams (Matura). All universities were obliged to accept external testing certificates in lieu of entrance exams. The government allocated substantial resources for these changes and established the Center for Educational Quality Assessment to head the reform.

There are a lot of lessons that could be drawn from the implementation of this project. However, the main one is that it takes considerable time to achieve sustainable results on the scale that was achieved in this case. It took at least two years of preparatory work and almost five hard years of implementing the project. However, without the committed project leader and the team of people who believed in the project and were prepared to work almost round the clock to achieve the desired change it would have been impossible to achieve what was done in Ukraine. On this note ESP would like to extend special thanks to Liliya Hrynevych, former Project Manager, and the extended team of local and international experts who contributed selflessly to initiation and implementation of the national examination reform.

Special appreciation goes to IRF’s management and the Foundation Board for continuous advice and critical support during times when misunderstandings with high-ranking education officials on the social impact of the project required direct involvement of Foundation representatives in high-level negotiations; and for investing considerable efforts in making this pilot project a national reform.

For more information, please turn to Natalia Shablya nshablya@osi.hu or Anna Toropova a.toropova@ukrtest.org