The lack of a technological device had affected that the fifth grader A.K. and her two sisters not to be able to attend online learning. For this reason, 170 other Roma students in the municipality of Prizren could not participate in the online learning.

The learning process due to the COVID-19 pandemic in Kosovo was interrupted on March 11, 2020, while distance learning started on March 23 of that year, where initially the teaching units were broadcasted through Radio Television of Kosovo, and then started online learning through various platforms. A.K. says she attended online classes only when her father was home, while pointing out that her two sisters had to use the same phone. "I did not have a laptop to attend online learning, I took my father's phone… When my father went to work, I did not have the opportunity to attend the online learning, because I did not have a tablet or anything. When my father came home from work, sometimes I had the opportunity to attend the online learning", she says. For the absence in the online learning process, A.K. says that she has been reprimanded by the teachers, as she shows that she has not received any technological equipment from the school to attend the online learning. "Yes, they reprimanded me... they said why I am not attending the online learning, I told the teacher that I did not have a tablet", she said. Two other students from the Roma community are in the same situation. Parent B.T. indicates that his two children have not been active in online learning due to lack of a technological device. He points out that the children used the only family phone to attend the lessons, which he says that in most cases they could not contact the teacher and their classmates. "During the pandemic, with the opportunities we had for online learning, but we did not have to attend them all. They attended the online learning with an old phone, but the result in the end, in grades and lessons was not good, they have not been excellent, the pandemic has affected both the boy and the girl… Many times they quarreled with each other over who is next to take the phone”, he said. B.T says he is unemployed and could not afford to buy any technological equipment for the children to attend school. He says that they did not receive a laptop either from the school or the municipality, even though they had made such a request. "It is very difficult, unemployed, we have spent this kind of life ourselves, and now the child will face the same situation, it is very difficult. When you cannot meet the child’s needs for learning, for everything, there is nothing worse, no one wants to see their child bad”, he said. In the primary and lower secondary school "Mati Logoreci" in Prizren, 186 students from the Roma community attend classes, and also in this school a considerable number of them did not attend online classes. The acting director of this school, Skender Ferati, states that the students from this community have given as a reason the lack of a technological equipment to attend online classes. "We have had communication with teachers and there have always been complaints about access to online learning from this community… There were more technological reasons, like we do not have a laptop, the phone is not working, various reasons, but most of the reasons were of technological aspects. There was no request for internet access because we still could not intervene in these circumstances, but we tried to help them with donations, the MED has brought some small laptops to give to some of the students who were in a worse situation, but it was not satisfactory", he said. Despite this, he points out that none of them dropped out of school, and they returned to school when the teaching process started with physical presence. According to Osman Osmani, director of the non-governmental organization "Nevo Koncepti", which deals with the inclusion of community children in the learning process and operates in the municipality of Prizren, the COVID-19 pandemic has further aggravated the situation of the Roma community in education. He points out that at the time the lesson was held online, about 170 children from the Roma community did not have the technological equipment to participate in e-learning. "About 170 children from the Roma community have not been included in e-learning. We have managed to contact most of them because we had the family contacts, and we asked them where the problem is, and in most cases, it has been the lack of internet, there has been a lack of equipment, a large number of families have not had a laptop, a computer or even a tablet that had facilitated their access to this type of learning, and these kids, if I can say it like this, they have been out of the system, like a dropout. The total number is about 170, or about 15-20 percent of Roma children attending school in the municipality of Prizren. It really was a worrying number for us as an organization," he said. According to him, the technological equipment that was distributed by the municipality of Prizren, at least went to the students of the Roma community, although he says that everyone was clear that the distribution of technological equipment for them, was the only way for them to be part of the education system. Kosovo institutions do not have data on the inclusion of Roma children in the online learning process, such data is not provided by the Kosovo Agency of Statistics.   This article was realized within the project "Identification of challenges in the learning process of children of non-majority community as a result of the Covid-19 Pandemic" implemented by the Center for Innovation and Development / CFID   and funded by Slovak Agency for International Development Cooperation / SlovakAid.