| Monitoring Government Performance and Commitment to Roma Education: Web-based Calculator
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| Introduction |
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Welcome to the Education Support Program's website dedicated to monitoring Central/Southeast and Eastern European Governments' performance and commitment to providing equal access to quality education for Roma. Governments have the responsibility to provide education for all minorities; when it comes to Roma, they have performed particularly poorly. The ESP web based calculator is a technical tool for monitoring access to education - the broad indicator of governmental accountability to minority populations in the area of education. The calculator makes an important contribution to ongoing efforts to gather better data on key educational indicators and will assist the compilation of disaggregated data on the provision of education for Roma children. Such data is essential for effective lobbying and to monitor the results government performance in this area. ESP's 2006 publication, Monitoring Education for Roma, described the deplorable situation regarding data on important education indicators for Roma. In an effort to try to fill the need for data, ESP began to collect data from secondary sources, and to derive, via a system of calculations and procedures, an international and comparative dataset on basic education indicators for Roma. It is the first of its kind. Each calculation and procedure for deriving the statistics that you see in the dataset are carefully documented in the Monitoring Education for Roma publication. However, with new sources and new data continually emerging, activists and researchers will need to derive updated statistical information. In order to keep you from the tedious and tricky task of making the calculations, the web calculator applet will perform all calculation procedures. We have only included instructions on how to use the tool itself, rather than how the numbers and percentages are derived, and those who wish to understand the calculations and procedures we refer to the publication itself. This tool creates the opportunity for a wider community of people to compare new data and information that are not currently part of the international dataset; it will facilitate capturing data and verification through opening and demystifying the process. We also hope that the availability of this calculator will encourage more people to be aware of government accountability and to engage in the policy development process. Good luck and happy calculating! |