The inclusion of migrant children in formal school system in Serbia begun in December 2016 through a pilot project implemented by UNICEF and its partner organizations. The pilot project included only unaccompanied migrant children from asylum centres in Krnjaca and Bogovadja. However, since mid-2017, UNICEF, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development and the Commissariat for Refugees and Migration have been actively working to ensure that as of September 2017 all children residing in asylum and reception centres are involved in formal primary education.
Although the obligation to include all children without discrimination in the formal education system is prescribed by the Convention on the Rights of the Child and Serbian legal framework, school administration often encountered problems and concerns about technical aspects of facilitating child’s right to education – from enrolling a child without personal document and communicating, through testing child’s knowledge in the absence of formal school certificates, to issuing a certificate of acquired knowledge. For that reason, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development had to deliver a binding professional guideline to concertize law provisions for the purpose of involving migrant children in formal education. This guideline was adopted and passed on to school administrations in May 2017. It contains not only concrete steps for the enrollment of migrant children in schools but also a set of measures to support inclusion of migrants of school age in educational system.
Under the Guideline, children who lacking school certificates, which is often the case with migrant children, will be tested to check their knowledge. Based on the test results, the schools’ professional inclusive education teams will draw up individual plans of support to the pupil, which may entail the engagement of interpreters for the languages the children understand and other professionals, depending on the schools’ finances. The support plans may also prescribe preparatory classes for migrant children, lasting between two weeks and two months, to facilitate their gradual adjustment, an intensive Serbian Language course, individualized teaching activities and the children’s involvement in extracurricular activities.
During May 2017, Social Inclusion Group of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, supported by UNICEF and Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, organized trainings on inclusive education for more than five hundred counselors external associated and teachers from 17 municipalities in whose territory are schools in vicinity of asylum and reception centres. There professionals should provide mentoring assistance to schools to include migrant children in formal education, a process which will be successively carried out during September 2017. Having in mind the benefits of education for the lives and development, we hope that this process will be carried out smoothly and that all children residing on Serbian territory will be included in educational system.
Photo: UNHCR