I will present the degree of inclusivity of the education system of five different countries: Hungary, Poland, Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia and how the education systems of the aforementioned countries can manage the differences among children, with an emphasis on the issue of providing inclusive education for Roma children. However, it is essential to investigate the general manner of conduct towards Roma people in a given society: namely, the phenomenon of anti-Gypsyism. It is impossible to analyze the status of Roma children in the education system of a given country, without also analyzing the historical and social context of that country in this regard.

Anti-Gypsyism is related to the stereotypical and non-diversified perception of Roma people that leads to prejudice against them in both private and public areas. The core assumption of anti-Gypsyism is the inferiority and deviance of Roma. Anti-Gypsyism is about the way the majority and institutions view and treat those portrayed in the public imaginary as ‘Gypsy’. Like critical race theory, the anti-Gypsyism theory sees race and racism, or ethnicity and ethnocentrism in the case of the Roma as central in understanding inequality; thus, it seeks to advance a deeper analysis about educational inequality based on that perspective. The history of the efforts for improving the education of Roma children in the countries analyzed was not done from the angle of human rights. Rather, the motivation was the process of assimilation typical of socialist-communist countries, that did not tolerate otherness, and intended to create a uniform, socialist person out of every individual. Their aim was to assimilate the Roma people – who they thought of as a social group defined by their lifestyle and not their ethnicity – through education. This effort to assimilate the Roma people brought very different results in each country. This difference was based on the resolve of the given system, on the history of the social relations of Roma people in the given system, and also on the various degrees of the diversity of the Roma people in the different countries.

Approaching the disadvantages of the Roma children in the education system from the point of view of human rights is the legacy of transnational organizations, like World Bank, UNICEF, UNDP, European Council of Europe, European Commission, etc.; and of foundations dealing with issues regarding international human rights, such as Open Society Foundation, European Roma Rights Center and Roma Education Fund. These organizations created a wholly different language and approach regarding the education of Roma children in these countries, at the time when they aimed to join the European Union. This approach was essentially non-existent, or rather wholly alien in these societies, which could be characterized as having a system penetrated by anti-Gypsyism on all levels and areas. The terms for becoming a member of the European Union included strategies and action plans, whose language mirrored in a uniform way an approach to the education of Roma children from the point of view of human rights. However, the local regulations, public discourses, and most importantly the actual, local manifestations of these strategies were very different from the original terms outlined by the EU. This explains the slow pace of improvement if there was even any improvement. In some areas, the circumstances of the education of Roma children even deteriorated. To give three examples, in Romania, the proportion of Roma children going to kindergarten decreased; in Hungary, segregation is strengthening; and the ESL rate is stagnating in these countries, in some, it is even deteriorating.

The study relies on empirical researches on the education of Roma people based on a range of country-specific and international academic and policy sources. The study will firstly and briefly present the context of the status of Roma people in general in the given countries and the status of Roma people in the education system of each country. I will also elaborate on the approaches and strategies towards the education of Roma children, the educational outcome gaps between Roma and non-Roma pupils, the attitudes towards the education of Roma pupils, the conditions of inclusive education in place and the mainstream equity education strategies and their impact on the education of Roma pupils, the social selection and the segregation of Roma pupils in the five countries, and finally the supplementary policies aiming at improving the education of Roma pupils. I will also explore the degree of country-specific segregation based on the PISA equity results in the countries analysed. By analysing data across different PISA assessments, it is possible to identify those school systems that have become more or less equitable over time, and whether trends in equity are corresponding with trends in performance.

The education systems of the observed countries are not inclusive towards Roma children: they were not inclusive before the countries joined the European Union, and they are not inclusive now, when all of them became members, except Serbia. The reason behind that is the absence of real political will for change in the government, and also the absence of a Roma or pro-Roma civil rights movement capable of forcing the government to create real social inclusion in schools. Planning of educational and inclusion policies for Roma has been tailored within the limits of the political will and financial possibilities of the observed countries. Their implementation is hindered by insufficient funding, poor implementation efforts, limited scope, and improper design. The educational situation of Roma pupils is basically determined by two inseparable phenomena. One is the education systems’ ability to be inclusive, namely to which extent the education is able to address children’s differences within the system and, in this context, to which extent the education is able to compensate for children’s social status; on the other hand, what is the relationship with the Roma within the observed societies. The latter is decisive because many analyzes and researches have concluded that the pervasive anti-Gypsyism stands behind the missing political will tackling the problem. While the education systems of the observed countries - with the exception of Poland - are among the less equitable and more selective systems (especially in Slovakia and Hungary) which sui generis are less able to compensate the social inequalities, the inclusion of Roma children is further paralyzed by the widespread prejudice.

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