NGO Young Roma sent statement to the Ministry of Education for engagement of Associates in the field of education – announce the call and engage Associates in all schools - NVO Mladi Romi

NGO Young Roma sent statement to the Ministry of Education for engagement of Associates in the field of education – announce the call and engage Associates in all schools

Details: Monday, 05 October 2020 11:20

NGO Young Roma, which has been actively working in the field of inclusion of Roma population in Montenegro for 15 years, sent a letter to the Ministry of Education, Directorate for Education of Members of Minority Nations and other national communities, referring to announced calls for social inclusion of Roma in education.

Namely, in the past period, our organization actively monitored Public Calls for hiring associates in the social inclusion of Roma pupils in education (mediators), which were published on the website of the Employment Agency of Montenegro during the month September. We noticed that the conditions for hiring associates (criteria) are the same for all schools, and in accordance with the prescribed criteria. However, the published calls provide unequal data regarding the amount of salary, where there are different data between schools. Funding for salaries for mediators in current 2020/21 school year will be the subject of a special initiative that NGO Young Roma will send to the Ministry and forward to the media, given that changed schooling conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the scope of work of mediators has increased significantly.

We compared currently announced vacancies with the ones selected in previous year – i.e. all schools in which mediators were hired during the previous school year and found that, although the school year has already begun, vacancies have not yet been announced in certain schools, which we emphasized to the said Directorate within the Ministry of Education.

These are schools:

1. Elementary school 'Marshal Tito', Ulcinj - this is the second year that the mentioned school does not announce a Public Call for hiring mediators, although in the previous year one person was hired for this position

2. Elementary school 'Drago Milovic', Tivat

3. Elementary school 'Mileva Lajovic Lalatovic', Niksic

4. Elementary school 'Radoje Sizmovic', Niksic - during the previous year, one person was engaged here part-time, and the other half of the working time was engaged in the elementary school 'Milija Nikcevic'

Given that the school year has already begun, we wanted to emphasize to the Ministry that the announcement of the calls in the remaining schools needs to be realized as soon as possible, so that the Associates-mediators themselves start working and thus children from Roma population have the support from the beginning of the school year, which they desperately need in the new circumstances.

NGO Young Roma will continue to monitor and analyze activities in this field in order to increase the number of members from Roma population working in this position over time and thus contribute to improvements in education when it comes to reducing school dropout and regular school attendance of Roma pupils.