This paper presents family education aimed at Roma families as an educational action that improves school success and social inclusion for the Roma community. The Europe 2020 Strategy sees education as a key element to achieve inclusive and sustainable growth, and sets clear objectives to improve educational systems (reduce early school leaving below 10% and achieving at least 40% of people aged 30-34 with tertiary education). Roma students specially face exclusion from education, with lower enrolment rates, higher dropout rates, and lower quality curriculum and expectations (Open Society Institute, 2007). In addition, the strategy “Education and Training 2020” sets the objective of achieving more than 15% of adult population participating in lifelong learning activities. Statistics show a gap in the educational attainment of children from academic and non-academic families (Council of the European Union, 2011), and adults with low educational levels and living in vulnerable situations participate less in lifelong learning programmes. The international scientific community has already identified family education as a successful educational action that reduces inequalities (Díez, Gatt & Racionero, 2011). Based on the preliminary results of the EDU-FAM project, this paper aims at providing scientific knowledge on the characteristics of family education that improves educational and social inclusion for Roma students and their families in Spain. For this purpose, EDU-FAM draws on the communicative methodology of research (Flecha, 2014). It is characterised by the creation of intersubjective knowledge between researchers and end-users of research which combines the voices of all participants from the data collection to the analysis, to ultimately identify and promote family education programmes that respond to the needs and interests of the Roma community. It allows creating synergies among actors and facilitating transference of results for the improvement of Roma education and the educational system itself.

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