The Czech Civil Rights Ombudsman Stanislav Krecek has criticized the continued discrimination against students from the Roma minority in his country. School psychologists diagnosed them with so-called “mild intellectual disability” about 10 times more often than children in the majority community, his office said Tuesday.
Roma children make up more than a quarter of students taught under curricula with lower requirements for children with learning disabilities. Their share of school age students is only 3.5 percent. The civil rights commissioner criticized that the consequences of social deprivation were often misinterpreted as a disability.
Low attendance rate in kindergartens among Roma children
“This has a decisive impact not only on the education of these children, but also on their future career prospects and their future lives,” continues the report, which was published at the beginning of the school year. Low school attendance among Roma children has also been criticized, although the last year of kindergarten before entering school is compulsory.
Up to 300,000 Roma in the Czech Republic
During the Nazi occupation in World War II, Roma and Sinti were systematically persecuted and murdered. According to estimates, there are again around 250,000 to 300,000 members of the Roma minority living in the Czech Republic today, most of whom emigrated from Slovakia, which until 1993 was part of the common state of Czechoslovakia. Many Roma in the Czech Republic suffer from poverty, discrimination and social exclusion.
Source: Krone
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