Prague - Roma children continue to suffer discrimination in the Czech Republic's schools, a year after the Europe's human rights court ruled that their segregation was unlawful, a Roma rights group said Thursday. The Budapest-based European Roma Rights Center (ERRC) said a survey of 20 so-called practical elementary schools, which provide education to disabled children, showed that Roma children were overrepresented in such schools.
In a landmark verdict for the Roma activists, the European Human Rights Court ruled in Strasbourg a year ago that segregating the Roma children in such schools amounted to unlawful discrimination.
The group said that, while the Czech Republic has introduced Roma teaching assistants and preparatory classes in recent years, the improvements were insufficient.
"We are asking for the abolition of the system as such," ERRC's Andi Dobrushi said.
The ERRC said that Roma children accounted for less than a half of the student body in only a quarter of examined remedial schools.
But they accounted for more than 80 per cent of the population at eight schools and for more than a half of children in six of them. One school failed to share data, Dobrushi said.
The Roma, also known as gypsies, are estimated to account for 2.9 per cent of the Czech Republic's population of 10 million, the ERRC said.
Following international pressure, the Czech Republic introduced practical primary schools in 2005 as a replacement for so-called special schools, where mostly Roma children received education tailored to children with mental disabilities.
Roma rights activists, however, say that these schools were only rebranded and that they continue to provide substandard education, primarily to Roma children.
