3.9. Refugees, Migrants and Roma

AFYA stands for ‘Health & Wellbeing’ in Arabic and Swahili. The project aims to promote the holistic health of people with refugee and migration experiences and work responsibly and confidentially with sensitive topics related to trauma and mental health.

The 'Guide for Roma school mediators/assistants', prepared by the Council of Europe, is aimed primarily at all categories of staff from the Roma community working to improve schooling conditions for Roma children. It is intended to provide staff with wide ranging tools and practical guidelines that can be adapted to different contexts. The guide considers the profiles of school mediators and assistants and their role in facilitating relations between the school and the Roma community(ies), between teachers and other school staff and parents of Roma children. The guides content is therefore designed to help improve the work of Roma school mediators and assistants and reduce the impact of any undesirable effects by providing structured day-to-day activity and highlighting aspects of mediation that are often not used in practice.

This monograph analyses and describes successful educational actions with a specific focus on vulnerable groups. Concrete data that shows success in school performance is provided, as well as on children, teachers and families accounts of the impact of this success. Alongside, there is an analysis of the relationship between these childrens educational performance with their inclusion or exclusion from different areas of society. This monograph provides actions for success identified through the INCLUD-ED project, thus providing both, contrasted data and solid theoretical background and development. Some examples of these actions are interactive groups, extension of the learning time, homework clubs, tutored libraries, family and community educative participation, family education, or dialogic literary gatherings. All these actions have been defined as successful educational actions, which mean that they lead to both efficiency and equity. Finally, recommendations for policy and practice are included and discussed.

Interactive Groups is one of the Successful Educational Actions (SEAs) identified in the research project INCLUD-ED. INCLUD-ED analysed educational strategies that contribute to overcoming inequalities and promote social cohesion, and those generating social exclusion, particularly focusing on vulnerable and marginalised groups. Interactive Groups are used to improve the education of children and youth in different contexts. They consist of grouping students in a class into small heterogeneous groups, each of them supported by an adult. Each of these groups is organised around four or five students, in a heterogeneous way regarding ability level, gender, culture, language and ethnicity. This example provides an understanding of IG and the results of their practice.

Dialogic Literary Gatherings (DLG) is one of the Successful Educational Actions (SEAs) identified in the research project INCLUD-ED. DLG are used to improve education of children and youth in different contexts around the world. DLG is a dialogic reading activity based on two principles: reading a classical literature book (as Romeo and Juliet, the Odyssey, Don Quixote) and then sharing meanings, interpretations and reflections with the dialogic learning methodology. It can involve children and their family members. This example provides an understanding of DLG and the results of their practice.

In the school year 2015/16 the Schulzentrum Ybbs (a school center consisting of three vocational upper secondary schools) introduced a concept called IndY, which involves that 20% of the teaching time is intended for individualized learning. IndY aims at improving students’ expertise, motivation, self-responsibility, self-management, collaborative skills, emotional intelligence and learning methods.

The objective of the MiCREATE project is to encourage the inclusion of diverse groups of migrant children by adopting a child-centred approach to the integration of migrant children at educational and policy level. Stemming from the need to revisit the existing integration policies, the research project aims to comprehensively examine the contemporary integration processes of migrant children to enhance their agency, participation, and well-being.

This paper seeks to examine evidence regarding the potential for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary teams to play a key role in the prevention of early school leaving. As part of developing a strategy for such multi/interdisciplinary teams, an important focus is on necessary and supportive conditions for their effectiveness, rather than a deterministic assumption of their inevitable effectiveness. The report highlights the need to provide strong strategic guidance to the teams on important issues to be engaged in by the teams such as mental health support, alternatives to suspension, marginalized families outreach, teacher conflict resolution and diversity training skills, bullying prevention skills, positive school climate promotion, engagement with parenting skills and a focus on children?s language development etc.

The overall objective of the project is to reduce the drop out rates of learners in vocational education and training, by providing materials and tools for counsellors and trainers to develop their own skills in working with groups, to detect potential dropouts and the special characteristics of learners’ groups, provide support adjusted to individual needs, and thereby improve the quality of their vocational education systems.