Indicator history

A 2011 quantitative study identified the following data: "Taking into account parents’ answers related to all the children in their household, in the 2,037 cases thus resulted we identified the following attendance distribution in terms of current participation in a form of education: 0.2% child nursery attendance, 3.5% kindergarten attendance, 0.6% school-prep year and 29.3% school attendance, whereas 66.3% of all children are not attending any type of schooling."

Among practical obstacles identified by the study are:

- for day nursery: lack of such an establishment in their residential area (especially for rural communities) (29.6%), financial shortcomings (23.6%).

- for kindergarten: lack of financial resources (44.7%).

- for school: lack of financial resources (55.8%), children working inside the household (13.7%)

- "Lack of transportation is a reason for non-enrolment invoked solely in rural areas.
Most children don’t even have their own desk to do their homework on, they don’t spend any time or less than an hour on their homework, and their family can seldom help them with schoolwork."

- The study also reports as obstacles to school enrollment of Roma children being: "the teachers’ indifference to the humiliation and embarrassment that Roma children feel because of the way other children relate to them, as well as the discriminatory treatment that some Roma children and parents receive in school, especially those living in precarious conditions.", "the mediator was the only person from school who stayed directly in touch with them, communicating on a regular basis and providing support when necessary."

- Lack of ID papers for children (10.7%) or parents could also be a reason for school non-enrollment ("While 71.4% of parents with ID documents enrolled their children in school at some point, only 55.9% of parents without identity papers did the same.").

Source:

Laura Surdu (coord.), Enikö Vincze, Marius Wamsiedel, Roma school participatio, non-attendance and discriminatio in Romania, UNICEF, Bucuresti, Vanemonde, 2011, pp.5-11, 31, available at http://www.romanicriss.org/PDF/RC%202011%20-%20Roma%20school%20participation,%20non-attendance...%20%28en%29.pdf (accessed on 17.02.2012).