Indicator history

Several studies show that the drop out of school in case of Roma pupils is higher compared to their peers:

"Roma children are more likely to drop out of school than their peers of different ethnicity (EUMAP 2007:25); 4 out of 5 unschooled children are Roma (Presidential Commission Report 2007:8); and Roma children reach significantly lower levels of school participation as regards both primary education (idem), and secondary and higher education (Fleck and Rughini 2008:157; 167)..." [1]

A 2011 study makes a quantitative assessment of the Roma children's participation in education and tries to get a clear understanding over the dimensions of non-attendance and dropout and over their underlying causes, using a national representative sample of Roma parents with school-age children. Its results show that "...of the 2,037 cases on which we could collect relevant information, 597 are children aged 7-11 years, and 636 are children aged 12-16 years. Of those 597 children aged 7-11 years, 264 don’t attend any form of education (44.22%). For the 636 children in the 12-16 age group, 411 have dropped out/are not participating in school (64.62%)." [2]

Sources:

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

[2] Laura Surdu (coord.), Enikö Vincze, Marius Wamsiedel, Roma school participation, non-attendance and discrimination in Romania, UNICEF, Bucuresti, Vanemonde, 2011, p.32, available at http://www.romanicriss.org/PDF/RC%202011%20-%20Roma%20school%20participation,%20non-attendance...%20%28en%29.pdf (accessed on 17.02.2012).