Education
 Hector McNeill
ECRE |
"Illicit means unlawful. The illicit use of funds can have several impacts, but in this case the ramifications are quite perverse. The segregation of the Roma children is undertaken by the local authorities as part of a procedure to obtain the funding. The segregation is a contravention of European law, it is illicit. To add insult to injury, the diversion of the funds received, ... , creates a situation under which it is impossible to provide compensatory education for these specific children. This is extremely prejudicial and an additional act of discrimination denying equal opportunities to education and is an additional contravention of European law. Not only is diversion of funds from a required provision illicit but the resulting situation sustained by the authorities unlawful."
* The countries concerned are the Czech republic, Hungary and Slovakia. |
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Segregated Romani Schooling - Inverview Part III
Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) a British legal practice have sent a letter to the European Commission requesting that they terminate segregated schooling for Roma and, in particular, effective denial of education in the Czech republic, Hungary and Slovakia.
PIL are acting for the European Committee on Romani Emancipation who maintain that the European Commission has failed to act, during a period of some eight years, according to European Council instructions. Romani World has interviewed Hector McNeill, who is the member of the European Committee on Romani Emancipation responsible for Central Europe to find out some of the details of this case. This is the third part of a 5 part inverview (these interviews have been syndicated) which can be accessed here:
RomaniWorld: In the first two interviews we reviewed where the European Commission has failed to carry out its mandate set by various European Councils and then we discussed the specific points of accession criteria and the relevant "chapters". In that you emphasised ther general failure in all areas affecting the Roma, but in education in particular, to satisfy the Madrid conditions. It is required that state administrative structures be adjusted so as to uphold transposed EU laws. It is more than evident that in the case of the special schools that the Madrid conditions have not been met.
In this interview we want to review the issues of financial transparency and illicit use of funds which ECRE has stated is also part of the problem. So would you be so kind as to explain what you mean by the term, illicit use of funds?
McNeill: Illicit use of funds simply means an unlawful use or forbidden use. What is unlawful or forbidden, depends upon a range of considerations which are brought to bear in any particular circumstance.
RomanWorld: Can you break that down a bit and provide some examples?
McNeill: Well there are four linked elements.
The first is the basis upon which the funds are justified in the first place. This is the basis for selection of children destined for special schools. The majority of children are selected not on the basis of intelligence but on the basis that they are from the Roma community. Put another way, these children are Roma so therefore educational authorities consider them to be in need of an educational regime which consists of segregation and denial of education. What you have here is a racial discrimination which imposes extreme prejudice on these children. The whole basis for selection is a fraudulent. However, it is the pre-selection head count of children destined for special schools which underlies the normative funding request. This means that right from the beginning of the process, even the justification for funding is based upon illicit grounds because such a basis for selection is in contravention of the law.
The second element is the diversion of funds which is the use of funds for a use other than their agreed and intended use. This has a performance implication. So the diversion of funding from one use to another normally causes an erosion in the performance of the activity from which funds are removed.
The third element is the environment, in this case we are talking about special schools managed by local authority education departments. Where there is an illicit use of funds within a local authority this invariably impacts public services of one form or another. In the case of special schools funds are received to provide education for children placed in such institutions. However, what is happening is that children of normal intelligence, in other words children not needing special schooling, are being transferred to special schools to segregate them. Secondly in transferring children in this way the local authority has selectively removed these children from normal school provisions. This creates a demand, or need, for compensatory educational provisions for these children to accompany or catch up. Unfortunately this demand, created by the local authority action, is not satisfied because the funds are spent on other activities. This is an illicit use of these funds.
RomaniWorld: You said there were four elements?
McNeill: Yes, the fourth element consists of the legal implications of all of this. The segregation of the Roma children is undertaken by the local authorities as part of a procedure to obtain the funding. The segregation is a contravention of European law, it is illicit. To add insult to injury, the diversion of the funds received, as explained before, creates a situation under which it is impossible to provide compensatory education for these specific children. This is extremely prejudicial and an additional act of discrimination denying equal opportunities to education and is an additional contravention of European law. Not only is diversion of funds from a required provision illicit but the resulting situation sustained by the authorities unlawful
RomaniWorld: So where is the doubt, if any, that there is an illicit use of funds?
McNeill: There is an imaginary argument which some people think renders the act of not spending the money on the children in special schools to be lawful. It runs as follows. Special school funding is paid out under so-called normative funding from central government to local authorities on an annual basis. The procedure used to obtain funding is that the local authority submits a proforma budget detailing activities, budget lines and funding requirements. Once the total has been negotiated and agreed the local authority can, to a limited degree, decide not to carry out some of the activities contained in the pro-forma budgets and spend the money on other things. It is this provision enabling local authorities to spend allocated funds, for example for special schools, on other things, which people use as a basis for stating that local authorities are not breaking the law. Naturally there are many other cash transactions where redirection of funding does not contrvene any law and does not create conditions which subsequently contravene the law. In the case of the special schools this is generally not the case.
RomanWorld: But what about the children?
McNeill: Well, of course. This is a flawed technical argument. If public authorities do not commit resources, or do not create needs on the part of the public, as a result of their actions, then clearly there is no harm done by using funds for other activities. However, in this specific case the public authorities have received money to provide an educational service. But they are not using the funds to provide education for those children placed in special schools. Specifically, the act of removing Roma children from normal schools actually increases the demand for resources on the part of the Roma children for compensatory provisions. But as I mentioned earlier, this is not happening. On the technical side this is an obvious failure in budgetary performance standards of public authority provisions. There is an abitrary division of the school age population into a group of children receiving a fairly intensive education based upon the normal school curriculum and another group of children, of equivalent intelligence, receiving no education under segregated circumstances. In the case of the second group the performance of the educational procedures, measured in terms of an output of contented children each with a useful education, is sustained intentionally at abysmal and non-performant levels. This level of obvious prejudice results from an intentional withdrawal of allocated funds and their use elsewhere. This is illicit and the motivation for such behaviour is, without any doubt, racial prejudice.
RomaniWorld: Was ECRE the first to uncover this illicit use of funding?
McNeill: We are perhaps emphasising this more than others but I should emphasise that, as far as I am aware, this issue was first raised by the Hungarian Ombudsman for Ethnic Minorities who raised the question as to the transparency in the use of funds destined for special schools. This was a very low key statement but he had said enough. I dont have the document to hand but it must have been 1998 or 1999 because that is when we started looking into this. I am sure that there are others working on this specific issue. I know that the level of awareness on the part of many is sound but I have become aware that many with decision making power prefer to shy away from the whole issue. Some have stated openly that they consider this to be dangerous territory because of the volume of funds involved and because too many people working within the government have an interest in keeping things that way.
Romani World: How much funding is involved then?
McNeill: The calculation in aggregate terms is straightforward. In Hungary for example in round figures there are 50,000 special school children and the local authorities receive around Euro 1,875 per head per child per year. That means a total transfer of Euro 93.750M [ninety four million Euro]. I have been told by Ministry of Education officials that other additonal payments bring this up to more than Euro 100M each year. A small village with 100 special school children, not uncommon, would receive Euro 187,500 each year. Now with teacher salaries in rural districts being around Euro 200 per month a group of 10 teachers would require Euro 24,000 each year, this leaves Euro 164,500. Government personnel have insisted that the funding is only used for teacher salary supplements. So in our example each teacher would receive Euro 18,760 each year, far more than members of parliament and even the Hungarian Prime Minister. The obvious question is, "Why would parliamentary committees vote in support such generous transfers for teachers to earn more than the MPs?" The answer is self-evident, it is that these funds are not used as stated, to put it mildly, the situation is not entirely transparent.
RomaniWorld: Thank you.
PIL - Public Interest Lawyers - One of the leading Human Rights practices in the United Kingdom. PIL have a track record of successful resolutions of human rights cases. PIL have won a series of high profile cases including the illegality of the Iraq war case against the British Government, the high profile Ghurka troops case relating to failure to pay adequate pensions brought against the British Ministry of Defense and the recent Ghost Ships case. (return to the top)
The full content of the letter to the Commission can be viewed at:
http://www.eu-romani.org/pil001.htm (return to the top)
Hector McNeill - Hector McNeill is a development economist. A Cambridge graduate with post graduations from Cambridge and Stanford Universities, Hector McNeill has been associated with voluntary service to low income communities for over 30 years. He has worked with the National Research Council, NASA, United Nations Food & Agricultural Organization, ICO, Manpower Services Commission, European Commission and the World Bank. He has been the projects coordinator of SEEL (Systems Engineering Economcis Lab) since 1984. He was a joint founder of ECRE and currently manages ECRE's Central European affairs in a voluntary capacity. (return to the top)
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