Wrong. There are so many things wrong with this segregated school idea that I was unsure how to even begin writing this post. It is pretty sickening to think that the racism that led to this situation has gone completely unchallenged. The parents at the main school have won their battle to rid their community of large numbers of Roma children and have been helped to achieve it by the authorities. Yet again, it is the victims of that racism who are affected. They are sent to this "special" school where the teaching hours are woefully short, 8am until 12.30pm. The teachers, through no fault of their own, are there for a year at best and are then moved somewhere else. As there are only three rooms, children of different ages are taught in the same classroom.

There are 50 children enrolled there but most of the time attendance hovers at around 50%. As one of the teachers there pointed out, it is not their job to find out why a child is absent for three days or more. If my son is absent for three days the teacher calls me to find out why. This is impossible to do when most of the families here have no telephone. They simply do not have the means to check up on them and there are no social workers to cover the school. So the children just don't turn up or appear sporadically and that's the end of it. I covered many of the reasons why Roma children have a harder time staying in school once they are enrolled in this post.

Children are enrolled at the age of six into primary education here in Greece. There is NO reason why all children starting school for the first time shouldn't be able to go to the same school. Instead these Roma kids are separated off, for racist reasons, to a school that has two or three grades in the same room. After spending their first years here, there is little chance that they will be able to go to the main school. The teacher told us that some of them are ready and could move on but only if they are accepted there. Language is a primary reason. There is no training in Greece for teaching Greek as a second language. So Roma children are at a disadvantage to begin with. Add that to the lack of teaching hours, the lack of continuity of teachers, the unwillingness to tackle the racism of the teachers and parents at the main school and it all adds up to a big mess. No wonder the drop out rate is so high with very few Roma children moving on to secondary education (even though it is compulsory)

My conclusion to all this is to tear the place down and work on integrating the children into mainstream school. Train teachers and social workers to work on both sides (with the school and the Roma community) to develop a better attitude to educating ALL children. The children I met there were vibrant and enthusiastic about learning. They were excited to learn a few English words and called "Bye" to us as we left. Why is it so hard for people to see that they are like any other children? They want to have fun, they want to learn, they want to play basketball, they want to show off their art on the walls.

ALL children have potential and they ALL deserve a chance to reach it. It is up to us to find ways of helping them achieve, however hard it might be. They deserve better than to be pushed away into "ghetto" schools and then forgotten about. Another generation of Roma children growing up without the chance of a decent and full education, condemning them to a life with little hope of improving their situation. It is sad to see so much potential go to waste. To see those ready smiles and know that they will be gone soon. It makes me angry that we can treat our youngest and most vulnerable citizens in this way. And still call ourselves civilised. It's a disgrace.

[I will state again that this situation is NOT unique to Greece. I happened to have had the chance to see it up close in this country. Thank you to the Greek Helsinki Monitor for organising the visit and for all the tireless work that they are doing here for human rights, particularly on behalf of the Roma communities. The post on my latest visit to Votanikos will follow soon]

UPDATE: Thanks to the interest of fellow diarists Migeru and Stormy Present I am posting the following links for further reading.

Segregation of Romani children in special school in Central and Eastern Europe by ET writer qika PR

Monitoring Education for Roma from the Open Society Institute

UPDATE 2: Panayote Dimitras of the Greek Helsinki Monitor has confirmed that this school is illegal and that their lawyer, who was arrested while advocating the Roma access to the main school, is awaiting trial.