Hungary: new research reveals the stubborn persistence of segregation of Romani pupils

09 December 2024

By Bernard Rorke

Despite numerous court rulings and EU infringement proceedings, new research reveals the extent to which Romani children still face structural discrimination and racial segregation within an educational system stubbornly skewed to reproduce and exacerbate social inequalities. 

New research by the Rosa Parks Foundation reveals how existing practices result in “an unjustifiably high proportion of Roma children being diagnosed with mild intellectual disability”; exposes how the diagnostic process leaves wide scope for biases, subjective diagnoses, and misdiagnosis, all the while excluding Romani parents from participation: “There are simply no guarantee rules in place to ensure that the assessment is carried out with due regard for children’s rights and disability rights, recognising and assisting parents as equal partners.”    

The researchers were often confronted with expert opinions that ‘more children should be segregated’. They found from the expert interviews that when professionals recommend special but segregated education for Romani children, often their consideration was not related to the child’s learning disabilities, but rather reflected a cultural deficit approach. Experts regarded segregation as a lesser harm to children from families burdened by socio-cultural disadvantages – children they deem as doomed to fail in the mainstream system. However, the researchers found that instead of attributing these issues to broader structural factors, many experts frame them as “a consequence of cultural differences, effectively placing the responsibility on parents.”

They also found situations that in segregated schools where the Romani students exceed 75%, the dilemma of choosing between normal and special education does not even arise, as there is no institutional or other interest in removing them from their segregated school. This led them to conclude that in such schools, Romani children are often not sent for expert assessment as they are already ethnically segregated from other children. Conversely, they found that in schools where the proportion of Roma pupils is between 50-75%, “children are more likely to be tested, to receive an SEN diagnosis and to be referred to segregated special education classes.”

The interviews with parents showed that the socially deprived and uneducated were unaware of their procedural rights during the expert assessments process, and there are no support personnel to help them understand the process. In none of the cases surveyed was an equality expert present during the child’s assessment, and no one appealed against the decision. The researchers asserted that “there is a pervasive lack of empowerment; parents do not initiate examinations, receive adequate information, or challenge decisions through appeals.”

The report cites the assertion by the Deputy Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of National Minorities, that “school segregation inevitably leads to a decline in teaching standards and learning outcomes”, and that fully inclusive and integrated education “apart from being the only form of education that complies with human rights standards, is the only real and lasting educational solution, both individually and socially.” Despite this, the researchers state, “Hungarian legislation still allows for segregation on the basis of disability, which, as this research highlights, has become a tool for ethnic segregation.”

These findings come more than a decade after the European Court of Human Rights in Horváth and Kiss v. Hungary vindicated the claim of two Romani applicants that their placement in a remedial school with a limited curriculum amounted to ethnic discrimination, that the schooling assessments were culturally-biased, their parents could not exercise their participatory rights, and they had been stigmatised in consequence. 

In 2013, the ECtHR found that the Hungarian state failed to offer “the necessary guarantees stemming from the positive obligations of the State to undo a history of racial segregation in special schools.”  Over the past decade, the Committee of Ministers monitoring the implementation of the judgment has not been able to close the case, because the Hungarian government has not been able to convincingly demonstrate that it has been able to eliminate the discriminatory practices that emerged in the case. In 2024, this research conclusively demonstrates that the education system in Hungary continues to fail many of its Romani children. 

In 2016, the European Commission launched infringement proceedings against Hungary for the segregation of Romani children in schools. As yet there is no publicly available information on the status of the Commission’s investigation. Indications suggest that the illegal segregation of children in mainstream schools is “growing dynamically”. This report by the Rosa Parks Foundation provides a timely reminder that the Commission needs to step up the pace with its deliberations, and delivers compelling evidence of the regime’s persistent and systemic failures to deliver on its positive obligations “to undo a history of racial segregation in special schools.”

The full report, Segregation in Special Education by Adél Kegye and Ágnes Kende, is available in English here.

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