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Description
The project responds to the problem of low education of Roma children from the socially disadvantaged environment (SDE) in pre-school facilities in Slovakia and insufficient readiness of municipalities and kindergartens for their inclusion.
The aim of the project is to map the situation in the preparedness of self-governing actors to integrate children from the SDE into pre-school education and to assist them in improving their preparedness. The project has 3 parts: (1) research (mapping the situation and making recommendations), (2) Intervention (assisting municipalities and representatives of pre-primary facilities in improving their preparedness), (3) advocacy: presentation of recommendations to public policymakers. The project will focus on training of (non)pedagogical staff, training of municipalities, field social workers, etc. or reducing less visible barriers to access to quality pre-school education for socially excluded families. The project will map in detail the interests and readiness of self-government actors to extend pre-school education through qualitative methods (focus groups and semi-structured individual interviews) and quantitative research methods (community survey). Based on the research data, recommendations will be formulated as well as assistance to specific municipalities in setting the strategy for preparing for the expansion of pre-school education.
The role of the Slovak Governance Institute (hereinafter referred to as SGI) as a partner, will primarily be to carry out research activities and participate in intervention and advocacy activities. It will bring to the project not only their research experience in the field of social inclusion but also the knowledge of the sensitive formulation of public policy recommendations. The Office of the Plenipotentiary of the Government of the Slovak Republic for Roma Communities participates in the project with eduRoma and SGI mainly in intervention and advocacy activities.
Summary of project results
The project responded to the new situation with the (then still) draft law on compulsory pre-primary education, when many local governments and representatives of kindergartens did not know how to deal with the situation. The law entered into force on 1.1.2021. The project was divided into three sections: research, intervention and advocacy. In the first part, primary data were collected, around the current situation in kindergartens and the readiness of relevant actors. Based on the outputs of this part, an intervention part was implemented, where the project implementers met with representatives of kindergartens and local governments in 3 localities and discussed with them the results of research and how to prepare for changes as effectively as possible. The advocacy part was focused on presenting findings from research and the field during interventions through meetings with the project partner, public discussions and closed discussions for representatives of other kindergartens and NGOs.
Project outputs: obtaining research data for the readiness of relevant actors for compulsory pre-primary education, creating a policy brief from research findings with a series of recommendations for the national level and the level of kindergartens, interventions in selected localities, situation analysis and tailor-made solutions for a given kindergarten , discussions with the professional public, advocacy of identified problems through press releases, discussions, meetings, methodology applicable to a wide range of users in the field. The unplanned outcome was professional discussions, which were included in the project to increase the validity of the project outputs. The project enabled the involvement of almost 30 experts in the discussion in order to improve the implementation of the law in practice and a total of 600 people affected by this topic. The project had a direct impact on 130 members from the marginalized Roma community and about 60 local government representatives. All outputs are publicly available and actively sent to several kindergartens so that they can continue working with them.