Indicator history

The Third Report on Portugal published by the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) states that Roma communities still suffer from social exclusion and encounter difficulties in their dealings with the majority population, local authorities and law enforcement officials. Access to education is one of the identified problems.

The ECRI report refers to the problem of Roma children faced with hostile reactions from parents of non-Roma children who do not wish Roma children to join their own children’s classes. The report presents as an example an incident widely reported in the press of the transfer of ten Roma children from a school in Teivas to a school in Rebordinho at the start of the 2003 school year. The children were transferred apparently in response to pressure from non-Roma parents in the first school. Placards were put up in the new school stating “No to Roma”. Nonetheless, the school officials reported the incident to the police and, according to the Alto Comissariado para a Imigração e Diálogo Cultural (ACIDI) [High Commission for Immigration and Intercultural Dialogue], the authorities did everything to ensure that the Roma children could attend their new school under acceptable conditions. The ECRI report also notes that according to non-governmental organisations and Roma representatives Roma culture is not yet sufficiently taught and promoted, especially in schools attended by Roma.

According to the report Complementary Data Collection - Contribution from Portugal to the Annual Report of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union (2009), more recently there was a case widely reported by the media of a class composed of Roma students. In March 2009 the board of a primary school in Barcelos was publicly accused of racial discrimination by the president of the local authority. The school had created a different class composed mainly of Roma children, aged between 9 and 19 years old (there were 17 Roma children in the class), who lived in a nearby Roma campsite. The Direcção Regional de Educação do Norte [Regional Board of Education of the North], which approved the creation of this class last year, qualified the practice as “positive discrimination”, a way to combat the risk of school early leaving and other assiduity problems and meet specific pedagogical needs. The claims of racism and racial discrimination by Roma organisations and SOS Racismo [SOS Racism] and the opposition parties demanded clarifications to the government. The Ministry of Education integrated the school in the governmental program Territórios Educativos de Intervenção Prioritária (TEIP) [Educational Areas of Priority interventions] as a form to improve their material and pedagogical conditions.
 

Source

Dias, B. Ralha, T. and Silva, E. (2009), Complementary Data Collection - Contribution from Portugal to the Annual Report of the Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union, Vienna: European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights.

ECRI (2007), Third Report on Portugal, Strasbourg: Council of Europe, http://hudoc.ecri.coe.int/XMLEcri/ENGLISH/Cycle_03/03_CbC_eng/PRT-CbC-III-2007-4-ENG.pdf, Date of access: 27.02.2012.