Inclusion and education

BOX 8.2: 
In Romania, civil society action mobilized 
government responses on Roma education
In Romania, bottom-up advocacy, monitoring and quality 
assurance actions led by CSOs and NGOs have prompted policy 
responses that have led to school desegregation for Roma 
students. In 2006, the Ministry of Education and Research 
estimated that 53% of Roma students were enrolled in segregated 
primary schools (Open Society Institute, 2007). Another estimate 
suggested that 32% of Roma children were enrolled in segregated 
schools and 35% in segregated classes (Surdu, 2008). Moreover, 
chiefly because of misdiagnosis, many were referred to special 
schools (European Roma Rights Center, 2001), which provided 
low-quality education.
About 200 Roma NGOs run initiatives on education access and 
participation, and some have reported cases of segregation, with 
the help of a network of local human rights monitors. One such 
case, Romani CRISS vs Salaj School Inspectorate and Cehei School 
(2003), is considered a landmark. It resulted in sanctions by the 
National Council for Combating Discrimination, raising awareness 
of school segregation in the country and prompting a series of 
government responses.
A notification prohibiting segregation in 2004 was strengthened 
by a 2007 order detailing an approach to eliminate segregation. 
Such efforts culminated in Framework Order 6134/2016 of the 
Ministry of National Education against school segregation, which 
extended the prohibition of school segregation beyond ethnicity 
(other than exceptional self-separation to preserve ethnic identity) 
to disability, poverty and academic performance. The definition of 
segregation covers not just school units or classes but even which 
rows children sit in (Farkas and Gergerly, 2017).
Following a public consultation in three pilot counties, an 
order in 2019 introduced a methodology to monitor school 
segregation (Romania Ministry of Education and Research, 2019). 
All schools will be obliged to monitor segregation cases and 
send the information to County School Inspectorates, which will 
centralize the data and communicate them to the Committee 
for Desegregation and Education Inclusion. UNICEF will develop 
a digital platform to store data as part of a partnership with the 
ministry, which will also develop technical guidelines on the 
monitoring methodology.
In total, 24 education systems
have legislation or policy setting out
a role for organizations representing 
vulnerable groups
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C E N T R A L A N D E A S T E R N E U R O P E , C A U C A S U S A N D C E N T R A L A S I A

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tool to mobilize community participation in planning, 
implementation and reporting of school operations.
The implementation evaluation of the 2011–20 Programme 
for the Development of Inclusive Education in the 
Republic of Moldova recognized NGOs’ ‘decisive 
contribution’ in training teachers, identifying needs, piloting 
models, developing the capacity of psycho-pedagogical 
assistance services and even directly providing such 
services as well as resources. The national council that 
coordinated the programme, formed in 2010 in the context 
of residential child care system reforms, was instrumental 
in coordinating ministry and NGO activities, and it was 
institutionalized as a thematic group of the National 
Council for Protection of Child Rights (UNICEF, 2019). CSOs 
representing ethno-cultural groups were also consulted as