Paper short abstract:

This paper examines the differences between non-Roma teachers and Roma students/parents as concerns evaluation and ranking. Through a case study from a Romanian school with predominantly Roma children, I try to highlight, how successes of EU-based educational programmes depend on culturally mediated expectations on what a “good school” and a “good student” is.

Paper long abstract:

Romanian educational policies for Roma are shaped by European Union-principles: integration, anti-discrimination, desegregation. But, as the following case study on a Romanian “Roma school” shows, the EU-based programmes create but a framework for upward school mobility. Success of joining-up models equally depends on how trans-nationally recognized systems of evaluation and ranking are implemented in a specialized, Eastern European context. Techniques of selection and reward embody the culture of competition, responsible for tracking, and sorting out students, influencing future educational – and subsequently – life chances. In order to prove it, this paper examines those EU-educational exchanges that created new opportunities for school integration in an educational institution from Romania with predominantly Roma students, and also the way this framework is linked to everyday school experiences. Major aim of this paper it to analyze how non-Roma teachers, influenced by a transnational know-how, vs. Roma students and parents build up experiences on performance, grades, recognition and evaluation of school work. As empirical data show, the former use good marks and school attendance as criteria for evaluating the students, meanwhile these letters expect the school just a good place to be. Broadening this picture with stock-taking of some systemic traits of the Romanian educational system, and specificities of the local Roma communities (relocation from houses to blocks) I try to show how these views on merit are not individual insights but culturally embedded perspectives.