Nearly 40 participants gathered in Budapest, Hungary, to take part in the residential seminar of the Training Course on Education Policy Making Based on Inclusive Values and Data organised as part of the European Union and Council of Europe Joint Project “Inclusive Schools: Making a Difference for Roma Children (INSCHOOL)”.

The 3-day training event, which commenced on 11 July 2023, focuses on conceptual and practical dimensions of equity and social justice in education, the main tenets of the Reference Framework of Competencies for Democratic Culture including intercultural aspects of inclusion. The participants will also explore the EU policy, funding and legal frameworks in inclusive education area and desegregation efforts of the EU, but also learn about the correlation of research and evidence analysis for policy making. The theoretical and informative sessions will lay a base for a more practical focus on the relevance of data collection and analysis for Roma inclusion policy making and approaches to equality data collection including relevant EU level resources, identifying and tackling challenges and debunking myths associated with ethnic data collection, as well as fieldwork approaches to data collection.

An important part of the training course is devoted to the problem of educational segregation and its consequences for individuals concerned, the community as well as the society as a whole. Segregation as a phenomenon still existing in Europe is a multifaceted issue that is influenced by both internal and external factors, therefore, the course will tackle this issue to better understand its characteristics.

The course benefits from wide range of experiences of its participants, ranging from representatives of relevant policy departments within Ministries of Education from Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Portugal, Romania and the Slovak Republic, national Roma contact points, school Principals and inspectorates, international organisation representatives, Roma inclusion academia/research institutes and civil society representatives.  The main purpose of the diversity of representation is to enable mutual learning, improve the understanding of the different layers of policy making, and highlight the necessity of the involvement of all stakeholders for effective and impactful policies in education.

The long term training course is organised as asynchronous blended learning combining a residential (in-person) training event, an online-learning phase, scheduled for the period of September – December 2023, supported by online interactions and practical work with the course participants. 

 Click here to access the residential training agenda