Transfer between schools

placement in special schools is only possible on the basis of an explicit request by parents in the first place, appeal cases are only hypothetical.

Two of the special schools in Veliko Turnovo Municipality (in Mindia and Gabrovtzi) were closed in June 2006 as part of the Ministry’s efforts to meet EU accession criteria regarding special schools. From the school in the village of Mindia with a majority Roma enrolment, only 12 of the 86 children were redirected to the special schools in Novo Selo or Teodosij Turnovski. The other children have been assessed as eligible for integrated education.²⁶⁵ Research carried out by the Amalipe Centre, however, has shown that the Regional Inspectorate of Education has not followed whether these children have been appropriately integrated in the mainstream schools or whether they have been enrolled in a mainstream school at all. The study showed that the children were just formally directed to certain schools in their place of residence, without any consultations with the parents.²⁶⁶

Another problem appeared for the integrated children after the start of the new school year. Resource centres were established in district cities by Ordinance No. RD 14-180/13.09.2006 of the Ministry of Education and Science.²⁶⁷ At the beginning of October 2006, however, these centres were still not operating and not able to provide pedagogical and psychological help to the integrated children formerly enrolled in special schools. Since the first two to three weeks are the most important weeks for the children’s psychological and pedagogical adaptation, this created a high risk that these children would drop out.

From the end of the 2005–2006 school year and the beginning of 2006–2007, the Amalipe Centre started a campaign for integrating children without intellectual disabilities from the special school in Veliko Turnovo into mainstream schools in the town. This, however, met with strong resistance from the teachers at the St. Teodosij Turnovski Special School. They made several visits to the Roma ghetto, where the teachers at the special school warned parents not to take their children from the special school.²⁶⁸

On 19 September 2006, the Commission for Complex Pedagogical Assessment met in the special school. A representative of the Amalipe Centre was present at the meeting and charged that the work of the Commission constituted a serious violation of children’s rights for access to quality education. Although the goal of the Commission is to assess and stimulate the children who could be integrated to continue their education in a mainstream school, the Amalipe Centre found a number of serious irregularities with the process. First, discussion with the parents revealed that only a few of them were present at

265 Interview with Mr. Lyubomir Minchev, expert in integrated education in the Regional Inspectorate of Education, Veliko Turnovo, 27 May 2006.

266 Case study Veliko Turnovo.

267 Official Gazette, issue 77 of 19 September 2006.

268 Case study Veliko Turnovo.

the Commission hearings. One of the girls reported that she had attended the Commission only once, although she is in the sixth grade. The members of the Commission made an unsuccessful attempt to deny the Amalipe Centre access to the meeting, although observers are permitted by law, and the parents gave their authorisation. Furthermore, the observer noted that members of the Commission tried to convince the children that they would benefit and succeed only in the special school and that they would fail if they attended the mainstream school. This was repeated two or three times to the children. At the same time, they were given tasks from textbooks for higher grades. This practice continued even after the representatives of the Amalipe Centre objected.²⁶⁹ The Regional Inspectorate of Education did not intervene, despite requests to do so. The Amalipe Centre is considering further steps to lodge an appeal to higher instances. Unfortunately, the parents themselves did not dare to make a complaint, since the teachers from the special school warned them not to do so.²⁷⁰ As a result, three of the children returned to the special school. No information has been provided so far by the Regional Inspectorate of Education as to how many of the children from the closed schools in Mindia and Gabrovtsi have not been enrolled in schools at all or have already dropped out.²⁷¹

There are no registered cases of transfer of Roma children from the special school to the mainstream schooling system in Vidin, in part because the problem has a social dimension: Roma parents send their children to the special school, even if they qualify for mainstream schools, because of the financial benefits that they receive, without understanding that this path greatly diminishes their children’s chances of employment on finishing school. In the 2006–2007 school year the Vidin special school enrolled 105 children, 85 per cent of whom were of Roma ethnic origin. This was an increase from the 83 children enrolled during the previous school year. The average age of children entering the school is between 8 and 12 years.²⁷² During both the 2005–2006 and the 2006–2007 school year there were children who enrolled in that school from the first grade.²⁷³

Parents must submit a request for entry of their child to the special school, which is examined and approved by a committee, attached to the Regional Inspectorate of Education and consisting of a representative of the Regional Inspectorate of Education, a psychologist, a speech therapist, a resource teacher and a primary teacher. The committee’s decision is based on a “complex psychological and pedagogical examination

269 Case study Veliko Turnovo.

270 Interviews with parents who prefer to remain anonymous.

271 Case study Veliko Turnovo.

272 Several attempts to interview the principal of the remedial school failed. That is why an anonymous interviewee, a teacher at the school, was approached on 30 March 2006 to answer the questions that were directed to the principal.

273 Case study Vidin.

of the child”.²⁷⁴ After completing the eighth grade the child receives a certificate and not a diploma. The children in the special school are assessed at the beginning of each school year, and there is, at least in theory, an individual programme for the development of each child, which is reassessed at the end of the first school term. In practice, however, this is rarely the case.

The Juvenile Delinquency Act regulates placement of children in special schools for children with behavioural challenges.²⁷⁵ Established during the period of Communism, the placement procedure for these schools was completely arbitrary for years and was a matter of serious concern for local and international human rights monitors.²⁷⁶ This procedure was reformed in July 2004 – placement became possible only through a court decision with some, although not all, due process guarantees. The new procedure did contribute to the reduction of the number of children in this type of special schools.²⁷⁷ However, it is still entrapped by the deficiencies of both the Bulgarian criminal justice system and the education system, with selective targeting of Roma juveniles as delinquents, and children from poor families being used as material to maintain the capacity of institutions serving their own institutional logic, just as in the case of the special schools.