Abstract:

In 2020, the coronavirus pandemic had a major impact on all areas of our lives. One of the areas that has been significantly affected by the measure against the spread of the virus is education. The aim of our paper is to find out how the education of children from a marginalized Roma communities took place during the coronavirus pandemic. In this article, we pay particular attention to the methods of education that were most common for children from marginalized Roma backgrounds, as anti-pandemic measures caused the termination of full-time teaching in our schools and the transition to distance (offline) education. In this paper we present findings from research (Rafael, Krajčíková, 2020; Rafael, Neupauer, 2021) conducted in Slovakia, which we processed through secondary data analysis. Kriglerová (2020) drew attention to the fact that the Slovak education system was not sufficiently prepared for the education of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds and minority groups. It is estimated that approximately 50,000 children were not educated in any way during distance learning. In some specific segregated localities, approximately 90% to 100% of pupils were not educated (Rafael, Krajčíková, 2020). In many cases, Roma children live in large households, where they did not have enough space and opportunities to be educated and also lacked significant pedagogical support (Kriglerová, 2020). The Ministry of Education, Science and Research of the Slovak Republic subsequently responded to the situation in the field of education of children from socially disadvantaged backgrounds. It is clear that experts and politicians have finally realized that the lack of access to education for children from marginalized Roma communities has a broader context, linked to segregation and poverty. The effects of these phenomena are then closely related to the employment and overall life chances of people from marginalized Roma communities.

Keywords:

Socially disadvantaged environment, Marginalized Roma communities, Education, Pandemic.