If being born in a disadvantaged environment conditions the social, economic and educational future of a child, being born into a gypsy family determines it even more. It is estimated that 89% of Roma children live below the poverty line. In 46% of the cases it is about severe poverty, which implies that they live in families who cannot afford basic expenses such as food, supplies or housing. The number of Roma boys and girls living in shacks or slums is much higher than that of the rest of children living in poverty, as well as the difficulties in accessing extracurricular activities, books and essential materials to achieve educational success.
This April 8 is celebrated International Day of the Roma People and it is time to remember that the arrival of covid-19 has come to deepen these inequalities even more, and has done so above all by influencing the triple educational gap that affects Roma children. It is estimated that 64% of Roma students do not finish their compulsory studies, compared to 13% of the population as a whole. Confinement and social distancing measures increased school dropout and absenteeism, which became chronic, adding to the added problems they had with the digital divide. If it was already difficult for students from families with lower incomes to follow their education ‘online’ due to lack of devices, in the case of Roma children it was much more dramatic, because a 79% of these households do not have a computer or ‘tablet’ and most do not have internet access either.
Added to these factors was an added difficulty, low educational level of fathers and mothers. Only 17% of the Roma population over the age of 16 have completed ESO or higher and have significant illiteracy rates. Even if they have the right equipment, They don’t have the skills to use them. nor to help their sons and daughters keep up with school. These boys and girls depended on the support provided by face-to-face education and reinforcement classes that disappeared overnight, leaving them in the hands of an environment that does not have the material or human resources to support them.
Two years after the start of the pandemic, it is urgent to tackle shock measures to recover Roma students who have dropped out of school prematurely, but structural actions focused on prevention are also urgently needed. It is necessary that the educational system act as a counterweight facing what their homes cannot provide them, but it is also necessary to promote policies to combat the extremely precarious economic conditions faced by the Roma population, because school failure is intimately linked to poverty and in this also the gypsy people have been much more affected.
Different studies on the impact of covid-19 reveal that the situation of gypsy families worsened more than that of the rest of the vulnerable sectors because a large part of them have their main source of income from street vending. The closure of markets, and the impossibility of making other activities such as scrap collection, They were left without a daily livelihood that was already very precarious, because it is also a group that paradoxically hardly has access to aid and social benefits.
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In his book ‘The Idea of Justice’, Amartya Sen assumes that inequality is a form of injustice and points formulas to repair it. One of them is public policies that facilitate equal opportunities in childhood and prevent a boy or girl from a disadvantaged background from being condemned to reproduce the living conditions of his family. Investing in childhood is thus not only an ethical and economic necessity, it is also a matter of justice.
It is time to move forward decisively to provide Roma children with the tools and conditions that allow them to overcome the social, economic and educational gap that separates them from the rest of the boys and girls, guaranteeing their right to education and a decent life.