Integration of Roma pupils Erasmus Project

Project Title

Integration of Roma pupils

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : Strategic Partnerships for Schools Only

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2017

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: Migrants’ issues; Early School Leaving / combating failure in education; Inclusion – equity

Project Summary

Westbourne has many Roma pupils from Romania. Roma pupils tend to leave school earlier than other ethnics groups and with lower levels of qualifications. This groups of pupils is also in need of specialist interventions to increase their social inclusion within the communities they live in as well as their school participation and to improve their academic outcomes. Collaborating with another school from Europe with experience of teaching this group of pupils will increase both teachers’ skills and in the longer term will help Roma pupils in our schools acquire and improve theirs.

This project follows on from our previous project in ‘Schools without borders’-2015-1-LT01-KA219-013417-, where we looked at the integration and teaching of immigrant pupils from Eastern Europe (Lithuania).

This time we are focussing on a specific ethnic group and comparing our educational inclusion practices with the ones used by our partner school in Romania.

As about 3% of the Population in Romania is made of Roma, collaborating with Romanian schools will help us improve our provision . As there are many more Roma pupils in Romania, we want to learn from our partners on how to best integrate Roma pupils in our school so they achieve their full potential.

Westbourne is the school with most Roma pupils in our area and we are looking into disseminating any findings with local schools during our network meetings and any training we will deliver to other institutes. We are already disseminating some of the findings from our current Erasmus Plus project, where we looked at the integration of Lithuanian pupils.

We would like to improve our school provision for Roma pupils and include them more fully in mainstream schools. This will lead them to have better qualifications and improved life chances.

We feel that our collaboration will have a significant impact on the following:
Roma learners in both countries- they will increase engagement with educations settings in both countries with a decrease in social exclusion and increase in the quality of their future prospects.
Staff in both schools- increase expertise and confidence in dealing with this vulnerable group of pupils.
Schools- both schools will be able to improve their provision for Roma pupils and learn from each other.
Local communities in both countries-support all local schools, both secondary and primary on how to include Roma pupils. Both schools can provide CPD at a regional level for other settings and providers. Greater level of integration and involvement the Roma community (families, parents, etc) with the state and with local schools.

We feel very positive about the opportunity to share our expertise in teaching these vulnerable group of pupils and we sincerely hope to improve their quality and access to education and to improve their inclusion.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 37440 Eur

Project Coordinator

Westbourne Academy & Country: UK

Project Partners

• LICEUL TEHNOLOGIC “SFANTUL PANTELIMON”