INTRODUCTION

The situation of ethnic minorities in the educational context has made notable progress over the last several years throughout all of Europe thanks to efforts made by schools, teaching staffs, administrations, associations and families to achieve full enrolment of children from ethnic-cultural minority groups with specific focus on the Roma community.

Despite this progress, the everyday practice of educational professionals indicates that there is a series of needs and problems standing in the way of educational standardisation for this group of students: significant academic deficit with respect to their age group, lack of familiarity with these minority cultures, lack of preventive and remedial strategies to deal with social conflicts arising from daily contact, high drop-out or absenteeism rates, low academic achievement level and strained relations with classmates and teachers.

This project was designed with the intention of providing teaching staff and the entities that support their work, mainly the training and resource centres and scholastic publishers, with guidelines and strategies to respond to the needs detected in the education of ethnic-cultural minorities through a process of ongoing training of teaching personnel and inter-cultural awareness.

The project developed here is within the framework of the European Commission’s Socrates Comenius Action 2.1 programmes.
www.socrates-youth.be