Segregated Schooling Updates in Hungary

19 June 2007

According to report of the Roma Press Center (RSK) a 10 January 2007, non-Romani students that have been commuting to the foundation school established in the Hungarian town of Jaszladany will apparently stop commuting to the foundation school and attend the local municipally- run school. RSK reported that the municipal school currently hosts 376 students while the foundational school has 205 students, approximately 70 of whom commute daily.

In 2001, the municipal government established the foundation school in order to segregate Romani students, who could not afford tuition fees of the private school (for background information, see: www.errc.org). 

In other news, according to RSK, the first three of numerous lawsuits on the wrongful classification of Romani students as mentally disabled began in January 2007. European MEP Viktoria Mohacsi, together with the non-governmental organisations Romani Civil Rights Foundation and Amalipe, instigated the lawsuits, which claim that the schools implicated wrongfully identified Romani children as mentally disabled and placed them in schools for disabled children.

According to RSK, Ms Mohacsi is asking that the number of Romani children classified as mentally disabled be reduced, estimating that over 20 percent of Romani children are classified as mentally disabled: almost 10 times more than what experts reportedly say the proportion of mentally disabled children within the general population should be.

(Roma Press Center)