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Facilitating a language-friendly environment for Roma children in Croatia

Human language is much more than a means of communicating — it creates a sense of belonging. Children learn very early that the language they speak identifies them as a member of a particular group. According to Piper (1998) children acquire their first language within their society of language users. They learn language in order to become a part of that society, and their learning is influenced by a variety of social factors.

When children experience a discontinuity between the language and culture of the family or community and the culture of the school (which is often modelled on the majority or mainstream culture) this can disrupt their learning. Language discontinuity between the home or community, and preschool or school can be a problem for many Roma children, and has been identified as one of the key reasons for the low educational performance, failure, exclusion, or self-exclusion of minority groups like the Roma.

The precise number of Roma who today live in the Republic of Croatia and their territorial distribution is difficult to ascertain. This is because of their territorial distribution and the fact that they are not a homogenous population — with differences in language, socioeconomic status and religion. However, the latest available data, obtained by mapping Roma sites in 15 counties of Croatia in 2017 (Klasnić et all, 2020.), suggests that there are about 24,524 members of the Roma national minority living in the Republic of Croatia.

The importance of multilingualism

Recently, the Open Academy Step by Step Croatia organised a focus group with educators from public primary schools on the topic of multilingualism. The group explored the importance of language development and the challenges that Roma children face when entering school, as well as the increase in the diversity of languages and cultures in Croatia. This article will explore language development based on insights gained from the educators practice, and the theory of language development.

Language is the main component of early literacy development, but including children from different languages and cultures involves more than just teaching them the alphabet. According to Nemeth K. (2021), five factors combining the social/emotional as well as cognitive domains need to be considered in diverse early childhood education programs. These are:

  • Identity and self-esteem
  • Tolerance and acceptance of diversity
  • Family strength
  • Supporting the home language
  • Support for teachers
1. Identity and self-esteem

In the process of developing language, it is important that Roma children are not denied the right to enjoy their own culture, and religion or to use their own language. However, educators should also be aware when they develop activities using the Roma language, that this does not serve to exclude Roma children from the culture and language of the wider community, and that the educational activities delivered in the Roma language are of the same quality as those delivered in the mainstream language.

During the focus group that was organised on the topic of multilingual learning, educators suggested that interactions between minority children with others provide an opportunity for the minority children to show respect for their culture and language. This is illustrated by one of the teachers who mentioned that “When Roma children say something in their own language or show some of their subjects to non-Roma Croatian children, they feel important and accepted.”

A child’s home language is the language of his family. It is the language used to love and nurture him from the time he is born and it is the language in which he learns about the world and how he fits into it. It is so important to support and honour this powerful beginning and to help the child see that this part of his life is valued and understood.

2. Tolerance and acceptance of diversity

Rather than using the word “tolerance” which suggests enduring someone’s existence and nothing more, the educators prefer the word “inclusion” in the true sense of the word, and emphasize that, “Opportunities for this need to be created.” From their experience, the educators added that “Children in a classroom benefit by learning to make friends with others who may look or sound or behave differently and to interact without fear or judgment.”

Even if the adults in the classroom are not bilingual, each child’s language and culture should be reflected throughout the classroom (Espinosa, 2009). In practice, educators use various strategies to address diversity in early childhood like sharing books about the similarities and differences between people, enjoying music from different countries, and inviting families to come in and share aspects of their culture and life. When educators were asked about the benefits of minority students’ plurilingualism and the benefits this has for other students, one educator said that “Non-Roma Croatian children really love to hear about Roma culture and they are interested in learning more.”

3. Family strength

The idea of family strength comes from the fact that parents are the child’s first teacher and are critically important in supporting teachers. To help parents become aware of how they can be effective partners in the education process, teachers should talk with them as early as possible about the parents’ hopes and aspirations for their child, their sense of what the child needs and suggestions about ways teachers can help.

In the Croatian case, the biggest challenge is changing people’s opinion that Roma parents. Many teachers assume that Roma parents are disinterested in their children’s education, as illustrated by one educator who stated that, “To the parents of migrants and minority children, school is very low on the scale of importance.”

 It is arguable that because many Roma parents, particularly mothers, have not been to school and are illiterate themselves this restricts their ability to support their children’s education. Community-based programs are therefore necessary to help parents to improve their own literacy in order to break the cycle of poor educational outcomes across generations. Parents should be recognized and supported as advocates for their children’s right to education and the value that it has for them.

4. Supporting the home language

While supporting the use of the home language at the same time as encouraging the learning of Croatian can seem rather complicated, children already have some knowledge of how language works. This means that in learning Croatian, they need only grasp how the new language works and how it differs from their first language. It is important that educators are aware that children from different cultural backgrounds may have different ways of expressing themselves. Instead of judging these as wrong or in need of fixing, the teacher must use information obtained through observation as the relevant starting point for that child.

5. Support for teachers

Teaching in a diverse and inclusive classroom place many demands on the teacher. In order for the teacher to be successful, a number of program supports should be in place.

Children need to be stimulated to develop and use their mother tongue skills. Parents, schools and the community have been shown to play an effective part in this. Opportunities for children to use and develop their mother tongue skills enable them to gain recognition for skills and see that they are of equal value to other language skills. Informal programs for learning mother tongues should be provided and encouraged.

As Croatia becomes more and more diverse, educators play a pivotal role in helping the new generation of children grow up bilingual, culturally aware, and ready to get along with all kinds of people in all kinds of situations. What a wonderful opportunity to give every young child — an advantage for a lifetime!

Author

Iva Sviben, program coordinator, Open Academy Step by Step Croatia

Photos: Taken in Orehovica, a municipality in Međimurje, July 22, 2021.

Sources:

European commission (2015). Language teaching and learning in multilingual classrooms. Luxembourg: Publications Office of the European Union.

Espinosa, L. (2009(. Getting it Right for Young Children from Diverse Backgrounds: Applying Research to Practice, Pearson

Klasnić, K., Kunac, S., Rodik, P. (2020.) Uključivanje Roma u hrvatsko društvo: žene, mladi i djeca. Ured za ljudska prava i prava nacionalnih manjina Vlade Republike Hrvatske. Zagreb, page. 68

Piper, T. (1998). Language and learning: The home and school years. III edition. Upper Saddle River, N. J: Merrill Prentice Hall

EU Roma integration is still lagging behind on school segregation and early childhood services

In the very recent European Report on Roma integration, the European Commission indicates progress in primary and secondary education. At the same time access and quality of early childhood services (birth to 6 years of age) remains a challenge.

Delivering on quality early childhood education and care for Romani children remains a challenge in many EU Member States. In early September, the European Commission published its Report 2019 on the implementation of the National Roma Integration Strategies.

The report focuses on the adoption of Roma inclusion measures and summarizes the most important trends on four policy areas of the EU Framework for National Roma Integration Strategies (education, employment, health, housing), as well as fighting discrimination and antigypsyism.

Some important achievements have been reached so far. As the Commissioner for Justice, Consumers and Gender Equality, Věra Jourová, mentioned: “Now, 90% of Roma children attend primary and lower secondary school.”

However, the Commissioner also mentioned that “receiving proper education from an early age gives every child a chance in life.” Half of the Member States have adopted some measures to increase the access to quality early childhood education and care, especially to increase kindergarten capacities, but the investment in early years means more than providing preschool education.

Early childhood is more than preschool education

In terms of services, much more should be done to support young children’s healthy development and learning (age birth to 6). For example by investing in early intervention and prevention programs; and by removing the financial and non-financial barriers to quality inclusive education.

In addition, although health and housing are two main policy areas that are closely monitored, we unsatisfactorily noticed that not much was mentioned about what impact those key areas had on young Romani children.

School segregation remains a pressing problem that undermines the success of other inclusion measures. The provision of early and free access to quality and inclusive early childhood education and care for Romani children could be one of the powerful solutions to this problem. At the same time, it will not replace the prejudice and discriminatory practices that schools need to address as educational communities.  

our contribution

The road to achieve educational equity for Roma children is still long. In four EU countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia) the National Romani Early Years Networks (REYN) have helped implementing some successful measures, such as the provision of in-service training and support for kindergarten teachers to improve the quality of their practices when working with children, families and communities. Also, they developed non-formal or community-based services that are connecting families and professionals of different generations both Roma and non-Roma.  

We look forward to work with the new European Commission and with the Members States to find efficient and just ways to increase the access to quality early childhood services for all young children and their families.

For further information, download the EC report.

Children should access education as soon as possible

In its recent recommendations the Council of the European Union states that all girls and boys should have access to quality early childhood development, care and pre-primary education.

The Council of the European Union has released their recommendations on access to quality early childhood development (ECD), care and pre-primary education.

The Council recommends to all Member States to improve access to high-quality ECD in line with the statements set out in the ‘Quality framework for early childhood education and care’, a key EU document when it is about the development of young children. Read the ISSA tool on the Framework for more information.

Quality and Equal Access to ECD

The recommendations say that all children should enter quality education as soon as possible.  All children whether they are disadvantaged or not and regardless of their ethical background, religion etc. 

On this, the document specifies that: “[e]arly childhood education and care participation can be an effective tool to achieve educational equity for children in a disadvantaged situation, such as some migrant or minority groups (for example Roma) and refugee children, children with special needs including disabilities, children in alternative care and street children, children of imprisoned parents, as well as children within households at particular risk of poverty and social exclusion, such as single-parent or large households.”

Download the recommendations here.

Roma education: what the EU Commission report doesn’t say

- Blog | Stanislav Daniel

In a recent survey, the European Commission asked for an assessment of the perceived changes in education, healthcare, employment, discrimination, housing and services. The results? In all the areas except education the “no change” was the dominant answer. On Human Rights Day we reflect on a public survey that may harm instead of help Roma education.

The results of the survey on Roma integration submitted to the European Parliament and to the EU Council were published last week. The survey was open to anyone living in the EU or enlargement country. Participants were asked to rate progress towards the achievement of the National Roma Integration Strategies (NRIS). With a lot of space for criticism and a clear call for urgent improvements, the 240 respondents also perceived education as the area with the most progress, including early childhood education (here).

The danger of surveys

The European Commission had already published its own review of the implementation of NRIS in 2017. Back then, they saw “a clear improvement in early childhood education and care (ECEC).” Since ECEC is described as improving also in the above mentioned survey, we may be triggered to think that education is already on the right path.

Firstly, we must clarify that these are not official data on Roma education; the survey results reflect the opinions of a marginal number of respondents (only 240 people). Secondly, even when the data was used (as in the case of the 2017 European Commission review), the selection of information and the conclusions were still questionable. In fact, in their follow up to the EU-MIDIS II report on education and employment, the EU Fundamental Rights Agency contradicts the European Commission (page 10, here).

It is certainly positive to see the EU asking for people’s opinion. However, more talking about compulsory preschool attendance will not improve the situation of children. Neither will it a higher school access without quality. As long as Romani children will be sidetracked into non-mainstream schools and kindergartens, segregated ethnically or by disadvantage, we cannot speak about progress.

There is a way forward. Let them know about human rights!

There is already a list of promising practices, encompassing science and the state-of-art knowledge, not beliefs and ideologies. Many successful initiatives are backed by data and the only step we need to see is the adoption of systems that work for all, including children.

Human Rights Day, gives us a great opportunity to think about Roma inclusion and its validation. As experts often talk about the economic advantage of early childhood inclusion, some may stick only to economics and forget about the importance of rights in the first place.

Along with the specific measures targeting children, we cannot forget about human rights. All the countries that have ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child must ensure the right to education and to a healthy and happy childhood for all children. Tell children that it is their right not to be discriminated and not to be sent to segregated schools. Then there will be progress.

Little Bogdan found his own words

- News

The first years of a child’s life are the most critical for their development. Alarmingly, many Romani children don’t have access to early childhood services that would stimulate them to reach their highest potential. This is a positive story, though: a five year old child who couldn’t talk and couldn’t draw, managed to gain the skills thanks to therapy.

“When Bogdan came to our Roma Community Center he couldn’t talk. Despite understanding everything we were saying, he could only speak out a few words,” says Aleksandra Miletic, Psychologist.

Bogdan is a five year old boy. He was diagnosed with expressive speech disorder and had limited fine motor skills for his age.

“He could not hold a pencil properly. His play was simplified and was not developing. Most often, he was only stacking big building blocks in a certain order and color” Aleksandra says. She works in the Roma Community Center in Kragujevac, Serbia. Many Roma go there every day, children and adults.

“There are three Roma settlements nearby our center. Many people come from there with different needs”, says a representative of Romanipen, the organization that manages the place.

Bogdan comes from one of the settlements. “He is not much different from any other boy”, Aleksandra continues, “the causes of developmental disorders can be many”.

Bogdan and his family worked hard

Since his sessions at the center started, his abilities have improved enormously: Bogdan now speaks out loud and can pronounce correctly almost all the letters of the alphabet. He learned a lot of words and can make simple sentences. Thanks to his family’s commitment, he never missed a single session with Aleksandra and the speech therapist.

His father is extremely happy with the results: “He has improved a lot. I noticed that he voluntarily engages in conversations with others now and he is better at drawing. Also, he is playing more with other children and made some new friends”, he says.

Since April 2017 the Roma Community Center has provided psychological help to over 100 children and adults. With 7 to 10 children accessing their services every day, the center has become of vital importance for the communities around.

When children like Bogdan are reached by services they are allowed to develop to their fullest potential. That is why REYN will keep advocating for the children’s right to access quality education and care. No more Romani and Traveller children lost!

More Roma and Traveller teachers!

- Blog | Stanislav Daniel

For most of the teachers, their job is a mission. Low pay and recognition despite high requirements on education are among the reasons that make this valuable job unnecessarily difficult.  

October 5th marks the International Teachers Day, commemorating the 1966 UNESCO/ILO Recommendation concerning the Status of Teachers. The recommendations apply to all teachers from nursery to kindergarten, primary, secondary, including technical, vocational or art education. And the more we study them, the more we see the relevance to today’s practitioners working with young Romani children.

Familiarity with the life and language of the children

Under educational objectives and policies [IV.10.i], the document lists that “all educational planning should include at each stage early provision for the training, and the further training, of sufficient numbers of fully competent and qualified teachers of the country concerned who are familiar with the life of their people and able to teach in the mother tongue.”

This recommendation is in line with REYN’s call for more diversity in early childhood services, both in practice and in the workforce. Simply put, we want a higher inclusive environment with more Roma and Travellers as teachers and other professionals – building on the advantage of community membership and multilingualism. We want to value the first language, not eliminate it as something useless that needs to be forgotten.

Better status for teachers, better quality for children

Why are there so few Romani and Travellers teachers? The reasons are many: early discrimination and lack of qualification later, low pay and recognition despite high requirements on education, difficult working conditions and low budget at kindergartens and schools in general. Many of the reasons affect both Roma and non-Roma.

Most of those teachers, who stay at the position, take their job as a mission. They work hard to ignore the low pay and try to see the higher good – smiling children, learning through play, new methods of teaching and the daily challenge of building new generations. But the enthusiasm has its limits. Without proper recognition, material as well as symbolic, kindergartens and schools will continue to struggle.

Attract and retain

The theme of this years’ World Teachers’ Day is The right to education means the right to a qualified teacher. The work done by our partner the International Step by Step Association (ISSA), to which we have contributed to in the past, testifies the benefits of professionalism in the workforce. They have done extensive work on quality of education, you may want to have a look at some of their publications.

We are grateful!

REYN takes the opportunity to express gratitude to those who dedicated their professional lives to provision quality education to children, in kindergartens or primary education. We can only repeat what the science keeps telling us all the time: the earlier we make that investment, the more benefits we get. Let’s invest in teachers, let’s invest in children.

NEW PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITY! Call for Applications REYN Study Visit in Slovenia

- Blog | ZoricaTrikic

Dear Romani Early Years Network member,
Here we come with new professional development opportunity!
We strongly believe that by connecting our best experiences and learning from each other, we can make a difference for all Romani and Traveller children and their families.
We are pleased to announce that during December 2nd to December 6th, REYN, in partnership with Developmental Research Centre for Pedagogical Initiatives “Step by Step”, are organizing a study visit, to Murska Sobota, Slovenia, as part of our capacity building program. The theme of the study visit will be “Developing High Quality and Culturally Sensitive Early Childhood Education Services”. For more information about the study visit, please look at the document attached with description of programme activitiesBrief_description _REYN_Study_Visit_Slovenia
Here you can also find application form.
Application form_REYN _study visit_Slovenia .
All expenses for the meals, travel and accommodation will be covered by international REYN.
If you are a REYN member working as a practitioner in early childhood development services, primary health care, early years education and care provision, community-work, social work or advocacy/rights programmes, with or in Romani communities, and are interested in learning more about how high quality and culturally sensitive early childhood education and care services can be developed in the context of kindergartens and preschools, please complete the attached Application Form and return no later than 9:00h (09am) November 11th to Zorica Trikic, Coordinator of REYN, at: ztrikic@issa.nl
Please note that applications submitted after the deadline cannot be accepted. Only applications from REYN members will be considered; if you are not yet a member do make sure to register by sending an email to membership@issa.nl before sending your application.
Note that the study visit will be organized and conducted in English.
All applications will be reviewed by the REYN Advisory Group and the ISSA management team by November 12th and, based on the information provided in the applications, 14 candidates will be selected to participate to the study visit. Successful candidates will be informed by email on the evening of November 12th. If you have not heard from us by the 13th November, please assume that you have not, on this occasion been successful and we wish you luck in the future.
We look forward to receiving your application and to providing you with an inspiring and exciting professional experience!

Zorica Trikic
ISSA Senior Program Manager and REYN Coordinator