18 thousand children without education10.01.2011
Pelagija Mladenovska
Despite that the education is obligatory; 18 thousand children in Macedonia don’t go to school.
Approximately 18 thousand children don’t go to school, despite the fact that the education as obligatory is guaranteed by the Constitution, are showing the results from the First Children’s Embassy in the World “Magjashi”. The elementary, and also since several years the High School is obligatory, but beside that many children are out of the educational system, even some of them don’t have documents that they exist, saying from Megjashi. The director of the children’s embassy Dragi Zmijanac has stated that efforts of the authorized institutions are only declarative.
“Every one of them is promising that in their mandate are going to commit themselves to include every children in the educational system. They welcome us, take photos, we present to them our views and perceptions, recommendations; we are taking effort for increasing the budget, but believe me, they don’t even try to help much about the issues.”
From the Ministry of Education, say that they are undertaking several measures to include the children in the educational system.
“One measure is the obligatory education, the project for free of charge books, and the project for free transport and accommodation”, says the minister Nikola Todorov.
According to the date from Megjashi, the highest number of children that don’t go to school are Romani. The data that UNDP has presented show that 91% from the Romani children begin their education from their 7th year, but on age of ten the percentage decreases to 63% Romani children go to school.
Dragi Zmijanac, director of the First Children’s Embassy in the World “Megjashi”
Semina Halimovska says that she wants to send her child to school despite that she doesn’t have the conditions for that, so at least that her child wouldn’t be illiterate as she is.
“We didn’t have any conditions. My mother was sick and also my father, so we remained without education, we didn’t learn. So now we put every effort for our children to learn, not to be like us that don’t know to read the alphabet, at least for them to know how to write their own names.”
When we didn’t registered our children, then we have problem with skipping school and didn’t have health care and protection and some other documents.
Fatime Bajram from the NGO “Sumnal” says that besides the achieved progress in including the children from the Romani population in the educational system, there are still some problems remain.
“The children can’t be registered because their parents don’t have permanent home, they don’t have address. When we have nonregistered children, than we have problem with skipping school, no health care and protection, and other documents. There are many problems, and is really shame that in 21 century we have children that are born at home, and because of that they don’t have any documents so they can’t realize the right for welfare and can’t go to school. That means that here in Macedonia, there are people that live in the country, but don’t have any identity”.
In the world, there are 72 million that are not enrolled in the elementary school, and this is the same number of children that are at high school age, but don’t visit school.
Reference:
http://www.makdenes.org/content/article/2268265.html
Translated by:
Martin Stojanovski
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