- guardian.co.uk, Friday July 28 2000 01.10 BST
The numbers of Roma are hotly disputed, roughly 600,000 - 6% or 7% of the overall population - say the sociologists. With Hungarian couples reluctant to have even one child, and most Romany families producing five or six, the implications for the whole country are clear.
Few adult Roma have work. Almost every family survives off state benefit. The problems of the Roma are rapidly becoming the problems of the whole society. "The government has a simple choice: to build schools or prisons," said Aladar Horvath, the head of the Roma Civil Rights Foundation.
It is breakfast time in the primary and nursery school in Edeleny, in north-east Hungary, which was set up as a charitable foundation seven years ago. In this mining town there are no mines left, and jobs are almost impossible to find.
"If we don't feed the children first, they won't be able to concentrate on their lessons," said Maria Volopik, the headmistress and founder of the school, smiling amid the din. She and the children, and most of the teachers, are Roma. Very few have eaten before they arrive.
"I asked the children one morning - are you Gypsies?" said one teacher. "No! they shouted, "Gypsies are dirty, Gypsies steal."
"Well, I'm a Gypsy," she told them.
"There are three problem areas in Roma education: the general quality of education, discrimination and ethnic identity," said Peter Rado, the author of a special report commissioned by the previous government.
He accuses a succession of governments in the last decade of dealing only with different fragments of these problems, rather than finding an approach that deals with the whole.
In the other three primary schools in Edeleny, Roma children are treated as they are almost everywhere in Hungary - put in remedial classes for the disabled.
Some 39% of Hungarian Roma over the age of 14 are illiterate, according to government figures. Their families' crowded rooms leave little space for homework.
Less than a third of Roma children get beyond primary school. Aware that the European Union is watching, the government insists that it is tackling the problem.
A "medium-term action plan" exists and a new interministerial council for Roma issues has been established with Roma participation.
EU funding is also focusing on education, including teacher training. Roma women are to be trained to become kindergarten nannies. Schemes will encourage children not to drop out of primary school and help them to catch up at secondary school.
From September, general textbooks will mention the Romas' culture for the first time.
But the government has long said it is devoting money to such Roma problems: Brussels funding will now mean that EU representatives can check how contributions are spent.
Useful links:
