The project TERNO (Teachers Education for Roma New Opportunities in School) is a project co-financed by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission (Key Activity 1: Roma Multilateral Projects) which aims to set up and implement special support centres in order to support the Roma children that attend the last classes of the elementary school to complete primary education and pass on to the secondary education.

The general objective of the project is to prevent the early school leaving of the Roma children and support the Roma children to move from the elementary to the secondary education. The project aims to improve the participation/maintanance in school for children with low living standard by overpassing the lack of interest towards traditional learning methods. The specific objective with which the general objective will be achieved is through the training of the teachers (or teaching assistants) that are teaching Roma in order to support the Roma children to complete the elementary education.

The main result that the TERNO project has developed are Centres for the provision of supplementary education for Roma children that are completing the elementary education and are preparing to pass to the secondary education. The organization of these centres was based on a methodology which has included all the important elements in order to help teachers of Roma children to better support children that attend the last classes of the school to complete elementary education and pass to the secondary education.

The consortium of the project is multi-actor, it has a great experience in the field and it has complementary competencies. It is constituted from 6 partners from 5 countries (Greece, Spain, Italy, Hungary and Romania). In the project they participate, 3 Roma Associations, one NGO led by Roma, a Research Institute which is specialized in the education research for the Roma people and an organization specialized in the development of research methodologies and management of LLP projects.

Tab 1 the Project

Tab 2 General Objectives and Activities

Tab 3 Main Results

Tab 4 Partners

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teacher training methodology

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Roma Teaching & Training

This project proposed by Action Synergy s.a. (Greece), a
consultancy developing knowledge-based applications in
the field of education, concentrates on pre-school education
for Roma children, to change perceptions and attitudes
that dissuade families to register their children at
pre-school. This problem may explain why their education
performance is comparatively lower than national average. The fact that Roma
children are not acquainted with the school environment tends to fuel their suspicions
and leads them to perceive the school world as a hostile environment where they
are not welcome.

Pre-schooling may be the key, though there are clear features of discrimination that
may be addressed along the way. The project develops and tests a model for the
organisation of pre-school centres, which are sensitive to Roma children’s cultural
background and which will prepare them integrate into the school environment later
on. The activities take into consideration the specific cultural background of the Roma
children under the supervision of two intercultural mediators, one Roma and one
non-Roma. These mediators receive proper training in the form of workshops and
e-learning courses, allowing for distance training. During the piloting phase, it is
envisaged that 80 children from the partner countries attend these pre-school centres
for six months. The organisation paradigm for such pre-school centres may later on
be transferred to other environments and the material for the training of intercultural
mediation is available online, free of use. The availability of these courses in such
a context may significantly increase the quality of pre-school education for Roma
children and thus contribute to the reduction of the number of early school leavers.

Coordinator: ACTION SYNERGY S.A, EL | Website: http://www.action.gr

Tel.: +30 2106822606 | E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. | Contact Person: Ms Anastasia Balaska

Site: http://romateaching.eu/

Source: Roma and Education: Challenges and Opportunities in the European Union

© European Union, 2012

This project is co-funded by the European Commission. This publication reflects the views of the author only and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use of the information contained therein.

Supported by the DI-XL project related with the dissemination and exploitation of LLP results through libraries