Fundación Secretariado Gitano launches a new online initiative for Roma adults to obtain the Compulsory Secondary Education Certificate [editar]

We are launching a pilot experience within the framework of the Social Inclusion, Youth Guarantee and Fight against Poverty Programme of the ESF+ to help adults who are on a pathway of socio-labour inclusion in Fundación Secretariado Gitano’s Acceder Programme to obtain the Compulsory Secondary Education Certificate.

On 9 October, we opened the 2024-25 school year in which 50 Roma over the age of 18 who are looking for work and who are spread over 35 different cities have enrolled.

This initiative seeks to respond to the fact that only 17% of Roma people in Spain have completed Compulsory Secondary Education (compared to 80% of the general population) according to data from our 2018 Study on Employment, Poverty and the Roma Population.

These data are a consequence of the educational inequality that Roma students have suffered from the beginning of their schooling: late entry into early childhood education, a gap from primary education (at age 11, 40% of Roma students have repeated a grade), disproportionate school failure rates in young people who have not graduated from compulsory secondary education (63% of Roma students compared to 4% of the general population). The lack of alternatives for returning to education means that only 7% of Roma between the ages of 18 and 24 return to regulated studies. These data appear in the recent FSG report: The educational situation of Roma studens in Spain, 2023.

This pilot course will allow us to test a new methodology that can be part of the alternatives for the educational return that can be implemented. The main elements of this methodology are:

• 100% online: classes, activities and exams will be carried out through the INAV platform, an official online education centre that participates in the pilot with its pedagogical team (educational counsellor and teaching staff).
• Online tutoring of the students enrolled by two professional pedagogues and teachers from Fundación Secretariado Gitano.
• On-site support from the Acceder Programme employment teams in the different cities.
• Distribution of compulsory secondary education in two levels that will allow students to obtain the Compulsory Secondary Education Certificate in 1 or 2 years.

We are starting the new academic year with great enthusiasm and we hope that the 50 people enrolled will be able to obtain their Secondary Education Graduate and thus improve their conditions of access to employment.