The report showing that segregation in schools is a structural reality, not an exception. Who are the children "in the last benches"

Students with social scholarships, those from single-parent families, Roma children, students with disabilities, and those from rural areas are the categories most exposed to the risk of school segregation, shows the first national report on the analysis of risks of school segregation in the education system in Romania, for the school year 2024 - 2025. The data, although relevant at the national level, are still exploratory, says the Ministry of Education, being the first exercise of this kind and depending on the quality of the reports made by schools.

The national report on the risks of school segregation 2024–2025 states that segregation is not an exception, but a structural reality of the Romanian school, closely linked to poverty, ethnicity, and disability. And its stakes go beyond the numbers: it puts pressure on the state to come out of denial and to treat segregation as a public policy emergency, not as an isolated "deviation".

The X-ray of a hidden phenomenon

The report is the result of the first national exercise in which all schools reported, student by student, data about possible forms of segregation, through the SIIIR platform. The report comes to apply, finally, the ministerial orders that prohibit segregation – 6.134/2016 and 7.701/2024 – transforming some legal texts, ignored for years, into a concrete monitoring mechanism. The report is constructed as a preliminary, "exploratory" X-ray, but clear enough to dispel a comfortable myth: that segregation only concerns a few "problematic" schools or "special cases". On the contrary, the data show a diffuse phenomenon, present throughout the country, which manifests not only through segregated schools but also through parallel classes, separate buildings, and even through the way students are arranged in desks.

Who are the "separated" children

In at least 8 out of 10 analyzed school structures (86.5%), there is a risk of segregation by classes based on the education level of the parents. In other words, children of less educated parents disproportionately end up in the same classes, separated from their more privileged peers.

More than half of the structures present a risk of segregation for students with social scholarships (56.5%) and for those from single-parent families (55.7%), indicating that poverty and family vulnerability directly translate into school separation. In the case of Roma students, the picture is equally harsh: approximately one in four schools with Roma students has a risk of segregation by buildings, and four out of ten structures have a risk of segregation by classes, which shows that ethnicity remains a major criterion for "ordering" children.

Regarding students with disabilities, the figures show: 23.2% of the analyzed schools have signals of segregation by classes for this category, and the situation is more severe in counties with a large school population. The report warns, however, that there is also a gray area here – some class configurations may have functional justifications – which does not negate the problem but requires case analyses, not hasty verdicts.

Intersectional segregation and "the last desks"

A key concept of the report is "intersectional segregation": the same girl or boy can simultaneously be Roma, poor, from a single-parent family, with parents with low education, and possibly with a disability. When these criteria overlap, the risk of school isolation explodes, and the "weak class", "Roma class" or "class of troubled children" becomes, in fact, a concentration of all social vulnerabilities.

A detail that says a lot about organizational cultures is the analysis of "the last two desks". This is a fine indicator: we are no longer talking about separate buildings or classes, but about who is literally pushed to the back of the class. Approximately 90% of the structures that appear with a maximum alert score in this chapter have not actually uploaded the necessary data, which is why the system has automatically penalized them. For now, therefore, we are talking more about a "reporting gap" than about a precise mapping of the phenomenon, but the politicized message is clear: even the way we arrange desks can become an act of segregation.

The map of inequalities: differences between counties

The report does not settle for national averages but clearly shows the variations between counties: some have much higher weights of structures with alert scores, while others seem more balanced. This map dismantles the idea of a "diffuse evil" and shows that local policies – from the inspectorate to the level of municipalities and school leadership – matter decisively.

In terms of public policies, the document explicitly calls for in-depth county analyses, discussions with local authorities, and targeted interventions: there is no single desegregation network applicable everywhere. In one county, the central problem may be the ghettoization of Roma students in a school on the outskirts; in another, "elite classes" vs. "weak classes", composed based on averages or "informal recommendations".

Why this report matters, in fact

The importance of the report is, first of all, political: the state officially recognizes, in its document, that school segregation is "a real phenomenon" that requires "sustained attention". In a system where for years the official response has been "we have no data", the emergence of such an X-ray changes the playing field: from now on, denial is no longer a credible option.

Technically, the report provides a set of indicators and a database that allow for the precise identification of schools and classes at risk of segregation – a tool that, if used, can guide funding, controls, and desegregation plans. Socially, it offers civil society, the press, and experts a new type of ammunition: we are no longer just talking about "we heard there is a class of Roma", but about percentages, alert scores, and legal obligations.

The big question remains what follows. The Ministry announces that it will continue the reporting exercise and that it wants the process not to stop at data collection but to lead to "concrete actions – systemic and institutional – for prevention, analysis, and intervention". If these intentions translate into training for teachers, real support for vulnerable schools, and sanctions for illegal practices, the 2024–2025 report may remain in recent history as the moment when Romania finally began to take school segregation seriously.

Synthesis made with the help of a data monitoring flow provided by the media monitoring platform NewsVibe Romania. The analysis presented has been improved with the help of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence tools