Exercise 9: Strategy development

In Assignment 7 the main aidea was about setting up an intercultural education programmes for
Rroma minorities in Romania. In regards to this topic, the aims of our intercultural global
education with a clear policy dimension for the forthcoming 5 years are as it follows:

Bilingual education policy: the learning of languages other than Romanian must be
expanded and improved through the Bilingual Program. Bilingual Program for Rroma
minorities in Romanian school will be functioning starting with autumn 2012. In fact, this
Bilingual Program was designed to be found in a school with large numbers of students who
have the same language background (belonging to Rroma minorities). Teachers instruct in
both the students home language (Rroma language) and Romanian, with the amount of time
spent teaching in each language varying from program to program. It is important that
teachers must be proficient in both languages;

Linguistic diversity policy : A policy of linguistic diversity means teaching and learning
for a whole school population, minority and/or neighbouring languages as well as
international languages. The policies of Romanian State are thus designed to create the
conditions necessary to promote economic competitiveness within the international
economic order. These concerns impact on language policy by prioritising the demands of
the market and the need for labour flexibility and mobility. From this perspective, the most
universal concern of the Romanian government focuses on the real or perceived failure of
many children in contemporary system of education particularly from minority groups
including Rroma people to learn the Romanian language to levels where they can
participate fully in the labour market. Anyway, there is also an increasing recognition of the
concern about the underachievement of minority language children in this regard (with a
direct reference to Rroma language).

Rromani is a language in danger of disappearing, if not protected and financially

supported by political decision makers in all levels in our societies as well as education
authorities, experts in linguistics, teachers, authors of teaching materials; the aims for the
next 5 years is to restore the Rroma language that has lost its prestige, some of its domains
of use and, last but not least, many of its speakers for economic or political reasons and to
create the necessary condition for normalising the use of the Rroma language.
policy required to maximise the goal of economic competitiveness;

policy required to maximise the goal of social inclusion or human rights: Education, and
the extent to which an education system develops minority languages, is crucial for
minorities. Furthermore, schools are important social institutions where culture and group
identity are constructed and reproduced. It is also in schools and around school matters that
the social networks which consolidate minority groups are created and reconstructed.

Rroma language (dialects) should be maintained and transmitted to its future generations;
children in each community may have the opportunity to develop oracy and literacy in the
language of their own community as well as to learn to understand and appreciate the
language of the other; Romanian state plan in the next five years to make all efforts to
ensure, as far as possible and within the framework of the education systems, that persons
belonging to Rroma minority have adequate opportunities for being taught the minority
language or for receiving instruction in this language. Another aim is to take measures in the
fields of education and research to foster knowledge of the culture, history, language and
religion of this minority;

The main stakeholders that should help us to achieve our strategic aim.
Rroma peoples in Romania as well as all over the Europe, as social groups with identities that are

distinct from dominant groups in national societies, are often among the most marginalized and
vulnerable segments of a population. They can be subject to different types of risks and severity of
impacts including loss of identity, culture, traditional lands, and natural resource-based livelihoods.
In the context of public participation, a stakeholder can be defined as any person, or group, who
has an interest in the project or could be potentially affected by its delivery or outputs.
Key stakeholders include Rroma-language minority community, governmental stakeholders, the
Ministry of Education and Research, the Ministry of Finances, parliamentary committees and the
Commissioner of Official Languages alongside with the civil society organizations, policy makers,
local officials, Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (FCNM), Minority
Rights Group, municipalities, teachers and parents.
Roma NGOs: Romania has about 150 NGOs promoting Roma interests. These various groups take
different approaches targeting the majority and the state, focusing on human rights, working for
social inclusion, etc.
The Ministry of Education and Research: the Ministry of Education and Research is continuing
to create a support structure by building on the inspectors and school mediators at the local level.
The Ministry of Education and Research has a Department for Minorities, which employs an
advisor and an inspector for Roma issues. Furthermore, each County School Inspectorate appoints
an inspector for the education of the Roma population. Since 1993, the Roma minority has had an
office in the Department for Minorities. This office proved its efficiency by lobbying for the
introduction of the Romanes language as a native language in schools, providing training for
Roma teachers, appointing inspectors for Roma education, etc
The Romanian Government initiated important reforms in the area of the judiciary, the health
sector, property restitution, minority rights, and child protection. Roma Representation in the
Parliament/Government: the Roma Party pro-Europa; On the governmental level, the following
specialised institutions have been dealing dealing with Rroma issues: Council for National
Minorities, established in1993; Department for the Protection of National Minorities (DPNM),
which includes the Roma Social Integration Office and the National Office for Roma;
Department of Interethnic Relations, the new name of the DPNM, after its restructuring in 2003;
National Agency for Roma, established 2005.
Roma political parties: The Roma Social Democratic Party and the Alliance for Roma Union;
The Roma Education Fund (REF): Activities that the REF will seek to undertake include:
1. Assistance and support to the Roma community, through the following potential activities:
Supporting Roma parents and community leaders to recognise and engage in key education
issues by: Involving Roma parents in school boards and parent associations; Detecting and
acting on school-level discrimination; Raising awareness of Roma parents on the importance
of enrolment and attendance at all levels; Increasing the flow of information on education
issues;
Supporting Roma NGOs involved in educational activities, to cooperate and strengthen their
organisational, networking, and capacity building structures, by: Identifying policy impacts;
Strengthening implementation; Accessing and using EU funds effectively; Ensuring
inclusion of smaller/isolated NGOs.

In 2001, the Ministry of Education and Research from Romania sought to address the Roma
education issue by developing a strategy on Roma education. The priorities in the strategy
are the following:
Encouraging more Roma to study at faculties and university colleges by increasing the
number of publicly funded slots for Roma candidates. The measure was initiated in the
1992/1993 academic year and has been extended subsequently;

Stimulating the training of Romani-speaking teachers by: establishing classes/groups at

elementary schools and pedagogical colleges to train Roma or non-Roma teachers, who will
be working with Roma students (the system began in the 1990/1991 school year and it still
continues);
Conducting Romanes language courses for Roma and or non-Roma ethnic teachers,
who may or may not receive qualifications;
Founding a Romanes language department within the Foreign Languages Faculty of
Bucharest University, in 1998;
Stimulating the study of Romanes language through special measures, including:
providing the possibility to study Romanes as a native language, at any moment during the
school year and in any study year;
Encouraging schools to employ teachers qualified to teach the Romanes language, or, in
the absence of fully qualified teachers, encouraging high school graduates, or at least
graduates who completed 10 grades and who are ethnic Roma, to teach Romani;
Drafting programmes, manuals and auxiliary materials for teaching the Romani
language and for teaching the history and traditions of the Roma;
Establishing territorial structures that should monitor the school participation of
Roma children and youths, in conformity with O.MER. No. 3363/1999 on the
appointment of Roma inspectors in each county school inspectorate.
Defining a monitoring and evaluation plan

Engagement with Rroma communities is not an easy issue. In defining a monitoring and evaluation
plan we should always make sure that the results of engagement are fed into our plans for the
future.
Throughout the process of engagement we will have built up relationships with Rroma ethnic
communities. It is not just a require but also a must to involve communities in monitoring and
evaluation frameworks.
In order to design, plan and then measure success across a project it is essential to collect and use
statistical information. In the case of the Roma integration projects the main tools include:
a Community Assessment establishing a baseline of information for each locality on the
families and the early childhood education and care services available;
a Household Survey focusing on parents attitudes and behaviours on education and care
with basic socioeconomic data;
a Database which incorporates the household survey, information on families participation
in project activities, childrens attendance at pre-school amongst others. There is also
the Continuum for Assessing Caregivers (a classroom observation tool) to determine the
standard of teaching in the pre-schools, including attention to diversity issues.
At the end of the project groups of stakeholders including local municipalities, teachers
and parents, will be broken into Focus Groups to provide their feedback on the process and
the impact of the project on the Roma parents and children.
In order to improve communication and overcome challenges in implementation, of this
monitoring and evaluation plan, some ideas could be:
Training community members to evaluate activities so, Rroma people are more likely to take part
and as members they are able to tap into their own networks;
Setting up a group to monitor progress in order to involve people from Rroma communities in
measuring how well they progress with an agreed action plan. A group could be set up to monitor
and scrutinise progress, and make suggestions for future activities.