Back Pilot schools from Montenegro hold “Inclusive Day” celebration online

Pilot schools from Montenegro hold “Inclusive Day” celebration online

This year's celebration of “Inclusive Day” was held on 11 and 13 October 2021. Around 80 high school students from 40 pilot schools in Montenegro chatted about inclusive school and democratic school practices in four separate sessions. Each session was thematically covering various areas of stigma and discrimination, notably of students with special educational needs, Roma and other minority group students, LGBT students, students from low-income households etc.

The discussions were led by Tamara Milic, Ministry of Education, Culture, Science, and Sports and Marijana Blecic, national expert on inclusive education.

A psychologist from the Resource centre for the treatment of children with disabilities talked about making appropriate changes in schools depending on a student`s physical or mental impairment. A student witnessed that in his school “some teachers refused to teach a class with a boy with autism because they didn’t know how to approach him”.

A former high school student from the Roma community talked about his personal experience with discrimination during his time at school. Language barrier, inadequate social interaction, and no assistance whatsoever made his learning experience difficult. However, he succeeded in completing his secondary education and currently attends university. “Roma students have been excluded both from curricular and extra-curricular activities in my school, so I advocated for their rights in Students’ parliament”, said one of the students.

An LGBT activist stressed the importance of accepting students as they are, and mentioned that LGBT youth are still not recognised as a vulnerable population in school settings.

It was also said that the resource-scarce COVID-19 economic context has particularly affected students from economically disadvantaged backgrounds by the sudden switch to distance and on-line education, and that such vulnerability is progressively growing.

Students shared their thoughts on inclusive schools: “Inclusive school reminds me of an ocean with all children in it regardless of their differences, having kids with disabilities not as remoted islands but as golden fish”; “It would be good to organise tv programmes, surveys, student podcasts, and similar media content and post them throughout social networks just to make people aware of the problem. And I mean all the time, to never stop with campaigning”.

Actions in education led to new opportunities in terms of awareness-raising nation-wide following the decision taken by the Ministry of Education to set an official “Inclusive day” aiming at promoting the concept of inclusive education as a reform principle - that will be celebrated in the Montenegrin schools on 11 October.

The “chatroom” was organised within the framework of the joint European Union/Council of Europe programme “Horizontal Facility for the Western Balkans and Turkey 2019-2022” and its action on “Quality education for all” in Montenegro.

Montenegro 21 October 2021
  • Diminuer la taille du texte
  • Augmenter la taille du texte
  • Imprimer la page