Council of Europe requests information on discrimination of Roma children in Hungary

Budapest, December 11 (MTI) – The Council of Europe (CoE) has requested information from the Hungarian government concerning an “unrealistically” high number of Roma children sent to special schools for the mentally challenged.

In a statement, the CoE said it required statistical figures to assess why there are more Roma than non-Roma children in such schools and what factors contributed to an increasing ratio. The figures should contain the number of Roma and non-Roma children that have been asked to fill in a test before starting school, and the number of children found mentally challenged based on the test results. The Hungarian report should contain numbers to indicate how many Roma and non-Roma children learnt in special or segregated schools, as well as the number of children that were at first found mentally disabled but whom a subsequent examination found healthy and allowed to join a regular school.

CoE has also called on Hungary’s authorities to include in their report information as to how children are selected to undergo the pre-school test and if Roma children are sent to special schools based on objective factors.

Source: http://mtva.hu/hu/hungary-matters