Greek Roma’s educational success: the contribution of community factors

ABSTRACT

Children from Roma communities are consistently among the lowest academic achievers in many European countries and this holds true in Greece. In Greek schools, Roma students experience high dropout rates and low performance compared to their non-Roma peers. Moreover, in Greece, as elsewhere, Roma experience wide-spread discrimination. Drawing on a set of in-depth interviews with 20 Greek Roma who have entered higher education, this paper examines how these participants account for their educational success. In particular, this article analyses the influence of ‘community factors’ on the participants’ academic progression. This article highlights aspects of the Greek case of Roma’s educational success that may contribute towards addressing aspects related to Roma’s educational exclusion and promoting educational progression in the European context more widely.

KEYWORDS:

• Roma in Greece
• higher education
• educational success
• community factors
• in-depth interviews

Acknowledgements

I thank Professor Meg Maguire and Dr Eszter Neumann for their helpful suggestions.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The Author declares that there is no conflict of interest.

Notes

1. The Social Sciences, Humanities & Law Research Ethics Subcommittee: Education & Management Research Ethics Panel, REP(EM)/11/12-61 ‘Successful educational paths among students from disadvantaged groups: the case of Roma/Gypsies in Greece’.

2. The names used are Greek pseudonyms. All the participants had common Greek names (and not special names coming from the Romani language).

3. In the Greek educational system, ‘lower high school’ is the first part of high school (3 years duration), known as Gymnasium/Γυμνάσιο, which is compulsory. Upper high school/Lyceum (Λύκειο) follows as a non-compulsory part (3 years) of secondary education.

4. written in a (more advanced and complex) type of Greek language closer to Ancient Greek.

Additional information

Funding

This work is based on my doctoral thesis which was funded by IKY – Greek State Scholarships Foundation under the ‘Scholarships programme SSF with an individualised assessment process of the academic year 2011-2012ʹ from resources of the Operational Programme ‘Education and Lifelong Learning’, of the European Social Fund (ESF), the NSRF 2007-2013.

Notes on contributors

Panagiota Gkofa

Panagiota Gkofa has conducted her doctoral studies in Education Research-Sociology of Education at King’s College (London, UK). She lectures at the Hellenic Open University (Greece), the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece) and the University of Nicosia (Cyprus). She recently joined the European School of Munich (Bavaria, Germany) as teaching staff.