Inclusion and education

FIGURE 1.3: 
There are wide disparities in learning outcomes in Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia
Percentage of 15-year-old students who have achieved minimum proficiency in reading, by socio-economic status, location and 
language spoken at home, 2018
100
80
60
40
20
0
Georgia
Kazakhstan
N. Macedonia
Bosnia/Herzeg.
Albania
Bulgaria
Montenegro
Rep. Moldova
Romania
Serbia 
Slovakia
Turkey
Ukraine
Hungary
Lithuania
Belarus
Latvia
Russian Fed.
Croatia
Czechia
Slovenia
Poland
Estonia
%
Average
Poorest
Linguistic minority
Rural
Richest
Source
:
World Inequality Database on Education, based on 2018 PISA data.
23
C E N T R A L A N D E A S T E R N E U R O P E , C A U C A S U S A N D C E N T R A L A S I A

---

were agreed with participating countries. Overall, 
14% of 15-year-olds in the 23 countries, mostly from 
disadvantaged groups, were excluded. In Albania, Bulgaria, 
Romania and Turkey, the share reached about 25%. 
Only in the Czech Republic, the Republic of Moldova and 
Slovenia were less than 5% excluded.
An education of good quality should not just deliver 
academic success; the right to be in good physical and 
mental health, happy and connected with others is as 
important as the right to learn. Alongside family, schools 
are a key environment for development of children’s
well-being. A positive classroom atmosphere, where 
teachers recognize and support students’ effort, can 
have a positive effect (Huebner et al., 2004). A sense 
of belonging to the school and the peer group is vital, 
especially for vulnerable children at greater risk of 
exclusion. Social diversity in schools is necessary for 
children to interact with peers from different social, 
cultural and ethnic backgrounds and to strengthen social 
cohesion. Yet schools are sometimes a place where 
differing perspectives on society clash.
A discussion of exclusion thus needs to address the 
barriers that a broader range of the population faces. 
Poverty
is the most important. It is estimated that 9% of 
people in eastern and south-eastern Europe, the Caucasus 
and Central Asia live on less than US$5.50 per day, but 
poverty rates are around 40% in countries including 
Armenia, Georgia and Tajikistan, ranging up to 61% in 
Kyrgyzstan. The economic fallout from COVID-19 is bound 
to increase adversity: Poverty rates are expected to rise 
by six percentage points in Albania and North Macedonia 
(World Bank, 2020). Even before the recession, children 
in poor families were more vulnerable to the pandemic’s 
education repercussions as they were less likely to have 
access to distance learning, being disadvantaged in terms 
of internet connection, device ownership, home support 
and living conditions. And children are more vulnerable to 
start with: in Romania and Turkey, they are over 1.5 times 
more likely to be poor than adults (UNICEF, 2017). 
Most, though not all, countries have laws to protect 
the education and other rights of 
ethnic, linguistic and 
religious minorities
(Rechel, 2010). The laws provide, 
among other things, for the home language to be used 
for instruction in schools. Some minorities enjoyed this 
right even before 1989, but others are still denied it. Ethnic
tensions in several countries have politicized the right to 
education in the home language, which in turn reinforces 
segregation or self-segregation rather than promoting 
social cohesion. Further suspicion and tensions arise when 
curricula make minorities invisible or stereotype them.
Ethnic and religious tensions often resulted in 
conflict
over the past 30 years. Wars in the former Yugoslavia, 
the Republic of Moldova, Ukraine, the south and north 
Caucasus, and Tajikistan devastated education systems 
and displaced millions internally or over borders.
The Syrian crisis led to the world’s largest wave of 
refugees; most were hosted by Turkey, but people from 
Syria and other countries traversing south-eastern 
and Central Europe sent ripples across most education 
systems. Governments in the region have been coming to 
grips with the challenge of including in public education 
systems displaced children who face trauma, loss and fear; 
discrimination and stigmatization; weak health; poverty; 
risk of exploitation and abuse; and restricted access due to 
barriers such as language of instruction and certification of 
learning (Bush and Saltarelli, 2000). On the other hand, a 
much lower share of the population than in western Europe 
has an immigrant background, as the region has been a 
source rather than a destination of migrants.
The 
Roma
remain by far the most vulnerable community in 
the region. They have limited access to education.
What education they do receive tends to be of low quality, 
often in segregated settings, with inadequate support and 
little if any use of their language or recognition of their 
history in textbooks. Roma education has drawn attention 
and concrete steps have been taken to improve Roma 
learners’ situation, commonly by using teacher assistants 
(Council of Europe, 2017; Óhidy and Forray, 2019; UNICEF, 
2011). Countries with significant Roma populations have 
some of the world’s most segregated education systems, 
comparable with those in Latin America (see 
Chapter 3
).
Children living in 
remote
areas often have limited access 
to appropriate education services. In some cases, children 
of nomadic families were historically forced to leave 
their families at an early age and go to boarding schools 
(Bloch, 2004), although sometimes the decision to go 
to such schools was voluntary. Mongolia established a 
well-functioning boarding school system with a tradition 
for child-friendliness. However, it was poorly maintained 
after 1989 and lost many features (Steiner-Khamsi and 
Stolpe, 2005). Despite increased migration to urban 
areas, 35,000 children remained in dormitories in 2016/17, 
of which 72% were herder children. Some dormitories 
have poor heating, water and sanitation (Batkhuyag 
and Dondogdulam, 2018), and communication between 
parents and teachers can be challenging (Sukhbaatar and 
Tarkó, 2020).
Youth deprived of liberty
make up a small but vulnerable 
population. Many countries have introduced independent 
youth justice systems (Dünkel, 2018), and international 
24
GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 2021

---

commitments require them to use detention as a last 
resort, the preference being such alternative measures 
as probation and community service (Goldson, 2018). 
But over 6,000 prisoners in the region (about 0.5% of 
the total) are under 18 (World Prison Brief, 2020) and 
their education opportunities can be limited. Romania, 
where 1.1% of prisoners are juveniles, has two detention 
centres and two education centres for minors (Andreescu, 
2018). Both have schools providing primary education 
on the premises, but provision of secondary education 
varies (APADOR-CH, 2014). In Turkey, 1.2% of prisoners 
are juveniles, accounting for 53% of the region’s total. 
Many are in open prisons where they can continue their 
education: 1,200 in open schools, offering adult education 
curriculum, and 800 in public education centres (Turkey 
Permanent Mission to the UN, 2015). But there are limits 
to education opportunities for youths in closed prisons 
(McKinney and Salins, 2013).
The region enjoys 
gender
parity in secondary education 
enrolment, a legacy of the progress made before 
1989. Among the 26 countries with UNESCO Institute 
for Statistics data, the widest disparity is found in 
Turkey, where 95 girls are enrolled for every 100 boys, 
and Croatia, with 95 boys enrolled for every 100 girls. 
However, household surveys suggest greater disparity at 
the expense of girls in Tajikistan and of boys in Mongolia. 
Gender and education has become a contested topic in 
recent years. In Hungary, Poland and Romania, curricula 
do not recognize the principle of gender equality, 
textbooks feature gender stereotypes and pressure 
groups campaign in support of the status quo, seeing 
threats to family and traditional values. Education 
ministries have acquiesced to such pressure (Juhász and 
Pap, 2018). While 85% of Hungarians believe men and 
women should have the same rights, public opinion in the 
region overall is decidedly more equivocal: Only 69% in 
Poland, 62% in Lithuania, 57% in Ukraine and 54% in the 
Russian Federation hold similar views (Wike et al., 2019). 
The Caucasus and some countries in south-eastern 
Europe have been blighted by female infanticide, the 
most extreme form of gender bias (Michael et al., 2013; 
UNFPA, 2015).
Another dimension of this debate in education is related 
to 
sexual orientation and gender identity
. In the region, 
47.5% of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender and 
intersex youth reported having been ‘ridiculed, teased, 
insulted or threatened at school’, primarily by their 
peers; about 23% reported feeling rarely or never safe 
at school (Richard and MAG Jeunes LGBT, 2018, p. 11). 
Yet several countries take no measures to ensure the 
safety of affected students and a learning environment 
that embraces diversity. In the Russian Federation, the 
authorities invoke ‘spiritual and moral values’ and ‘historic 
and national-culture traditions’ to oppose introduction 
of comprehensive sexuality education (Human Rights 
Watch, 2018), reflecting public opinion. In all countries of 
Central and Eastern Europe and the Caucasus, except the 
Czech Republic and Slovakia, a majority opposes same-sex 
marriage. Less than 5% support it in Armenia, Georgia and 
the Russian Federation (Pew Research Center, 2018).
Fully embracing the concept of inclusion in education, 
when it runs against deeply held and divisive views on 
issues such as disability, ethnicity, religion or sexuality, 
requires teachers to become agents of change and 
overcome social biases and prejudices. In turn, this 
necessitates considerable autonomy in development of 
pedagogical practice in learners’ best interest. Autonomy 
is ‘intertwined with other aspects such as professional 
judgement, trust and ethics’ (Sachs, 2001). It requires 
resilience and an ability to acknowledge mistakes as 
opportunities for development. This is often possible only 
if teachers in a school act as a team. Teacher collaboration 
is one of the most reliable tools for effective education 
(Hattie, 2012).
Yet teachers’ professional identity has often been built on 
another basis, especially in the case of those not trained 
as specialist educators. Pre-service teacher education 
curricula are often not adjusted to match policy change, 
and professional development opportunities may be 
infrequent and not responsive to teacher demand. 
The trend towards greater teacher autonomy is quite 
recent in the region and policy documents mention 
it relatively rarely (Eurydice, 2008). Teachers seldom 
have the confidence to act autonomously in classroom 
management. Heavily overloaded curricula also limit their 
autonomy and opportunities for teaching the whole class. 
Teachers seldom mention peers as partners or a source of 
knowledge transfer. For teachers to be resilient agents of 
change for inclusion and social justice, countries need to 
rethink the concept of teaching as an individualistic activity.