The project TERNO (Teachers Education for Roma New Opportunities in School) is a project co-financed by the Lifelong Learning Programme of the European Commission (Key Activity 1: Roma Multilateral Projects) which aims to set up and implement special support centres in order to support the Roma children that attend the last classes of the elementary school to complete primary education and pass on to the secondary education.
In order to achieve this objective, the project developed a methodology for the training of the teachers in order to provide them with supplementary education that takes into account the Roma cultural background of these children. These teachers supervised the activities in the support centre and provided to the children all the necessary support, being educational, social or other. The centres also equipped with computers in order to provide access to the Roma children to the ICT based resources which are available to the children of the mainstream population. The teachers, together with the partners, organised information sessions in order to inform Roma parents on how to support their children complete primary and pass on to the secondary education.
The main problem that the project aims to tackle is that, according to research data, 50% of the Roma children around Europe do not complete their primary education. Some of the reasons that educational research has pointed out in order to explain this phenomenon are that Roma parents may often lack information and parenting skills to support their children’s language and social development, that the social environment in which the children live is characterized by an horizontal way of learning without the rigid school rules, that school education does not take into account the particularities of the Roma culture etc. The main conclusion of all this research is that there is a need for the provision of special support to the Roma children in order to help them succeed in their school.
