::Young Gypsy-Traveller:: Media ::

An Ofsted report out today reveals deep-seated prejudice towards traveller pupils, writes Polly Curtis

Tuesday December 9, 2003
The Guardian

Nina Smith, 20, says she found school easy. She sailed through, made friends and passed her exams. "Obviously I got all the racial abuse and everything that comes with that," she says in an off-hand way. "It was mostly name-calling."

But Nina, unlike most victims of racial abuse, is white. She is a traveller.

Nina's family have been based on the same (now council-owned) site in Norwich for 30 years, but she has moved around the city, sometimes living in houses, then moving back to the site with her Mum and seven brothers and sisters. Which means, like many traveller children, she moved through a handful of schools in the area.

"I got eight GCSEs. For someone who's come off a travellers' site that's good I suppose, there aren't really many of them that do pass," says Nina, whose mother, grandparents and most of her siblings can't read or write.

"I've got one brother doing a bricklaying course at college. He's trying for that at the moment. I said to him 'you go for it bruv', you can't really knock that back can you?"

She did, however, have a problem when she got to college to do a level 1 NVQ in childcare. "I didn't like college. It was full of la-di-da people, I'm not a la-dee-da person; I haven't got a plum stuck in my throat. The first day there I shut the window and broke it. I didn't know how hard to push and I smashed it. I wanted to go home there and then. I got through the day and left and never went back. I didn't fit in at college to be quite honest."

Caroline Henderson was Nina's liaison officer from the local Travellers Education Service (TES). She took her into school on her first ever day. She would also turn up in the mornings to knock on Nina's trailer to make sure she got out of bed. She says that the traveller children she works with are incredibly sensitive to how they are received at school.

"There is often a feeling of traveller children not being welcome. Not always, but it does happen. Schools might think that they will be difficult and disruptive. Kids who have faced prejudice all their lives are sensitive to that," she says.

On bonfire night this year the burning of a trailer with the images of a family of travellers painted on the side in the Sussex hamlet of Firle caused an outcry and the organisers were arrested for inciting racial hatred.

Today an Ofsted report on provision for traveller children in schools is published, and it makes shocking reading. It documents bricks being thrown at the caravans of traveller families and traveller children who have been refused service in shops. It talks of "deep-seated" prejudice against the traveller community, and the inhibitive effect this is having on their education.

There are now 12,000 traveller children not registered in school out of an estimated school-age population of 60-70,000; attendance rate for traveller children is the lowest of any ethnicity at 75%; and traveller children have the lowest levels of achievement of any ethnic group.

"The vast majority of traveller pupils linger on the periphery of the education system. The situation has persisted for too long and the alarm bells rung in earlier reports have yet to be heeded," the report says.

Lorna Daymond, head of the TES in Norfolk, is not shocked. "They are talking about 10-12,000 traveller children out of school as if it's a surprise. We knew that in 1996, what's new?"

Practically every local authority now has a TES. They are at the heart of the battle to get traveller children into school. The challenges they face, says Daymond, is complex. Number one is that travellers are usually, though by no means always, mobile. This means that pupils can be chopping and changing schools and left to the whim of local authorities' ability to place them.

Henderson adds that some schools can be reluctant to take on pupils for fear of the extra resources they need, and how they affect their schools' attendance and league table places.
But the issue isn't just about mobility. The curriculum is neither appealing to young traveller children, nor flexible enough. "There are real similarities with black Caribbean boys," says Daymond. "There is a feeling that what they are being taught doesn't reflect their lives - when they're looking at images they are thinking, 'where am I in here, where do I fit in?' The child is left asking what this has to do with them."

But it's not just schools that are to blame. "I can understand that parents decide that there are more important things than school. At 14, 15 they need their children to help with the family's economics. Traditionally that's how it worked. So they are treated as adults within the home and then once in school there is a power differential which has never been negotiated, that makes the kids' lives difficult.

"There is a problem with mistrust of the settled community, of schools and particularly secondary schools. Parents ask themselves: 'Will my child be safe, will my child be happy, will what they learn be relevant and appropriate?" says Daymond.

Daymond, and Henderson too, are more than aware of the risks they take in trying to win round some traveller families to the idea of school. They are keen to do their jobs, while not interfering with the traveller culture. But Daymond is passionate about combating the poverty "trap" that comes with illiteracy.

"We're talking about self-esteem, life chances and choices, employability and a poverty trap. There are not very many jobs that you can be guaranteed good salaries for which don't involve some sort of literacy or numeracy skills. The ways out of the poverty trap are few."

But what Daymond finds "really worrying" about Ofsted's findings are the attitudes of some schools which it reveals. In some cases, schools have resorted to the argument that "we do not see any difference and we respond to them (travellers) in the same way as we do other children". The report says that the "cultural blindness" could fall foul of new regulations for public organisations to positively promote good racial relations. "They are the one minority ethnic group which is too often 'out of sight, out of mind'," the report says.

But the report, while highlighting good practice in schools and by the TES, is also critical of local authorities. Different agencies within the same authority can be "at odds" with one another. Some might be promoting educational inclusion and access to schooling while others are cracking down on unauthorised encampments and moving travellers on.

Emma Nuttall, a manager of the campaigning group Friends, Families and Travellers recognises this. "Travellers will be evicted and moved around all the time. It's institutional child abuse and yes it stops them learning. The Traveller Education Service will be finding places in school, then the traveller liaison officer will be evicting them. The main problem facing traveller children is lack of secure accommodation."

The official caravan count for England, carried out by the office of the Deputy Prime Minister in July 16 2003 found that there were 14,705 caravans; 3,979 - 27% - were on unauthorised settlements; 6,042 on official council sites and 4,684 are on privately owned sites.

Nina's site, Mile Cross, is a council-owned site. It's on the outskirts of Norwich, tucked behind a rubbish dump. A helicopter circles above, "Just checking us out," says Nina. When I visit, the trailers are arranged around a muddy field where the horses usually live. The housing authority is refurbishing the plots. They are being made bigger, more secure and the huts with the running water and bathrooms are being painted.

Nina's happy that the council are investing and securing their site, but she's also frustrated. The field is muddy and uncomfortable and the plots won't be ready for Christmas. What's more, while building work is going on, the on-site out of school club run by the Family Welfare Association, where she works as a trainee children's project coordinator, is out of action so she can't do the job she loves with the community and the kids she loves. Instead, she has to focus on the coursework side - she's studying for an NVQ level 2 - in the workplace.

"I do like it," she says. "I love being with the kids but things are hard at the moment. Sometimes I find things easy, the next day I look at the same thing and get frustrated and can't do it. I'm stubborn, I don't ask for help. But I do need help sometimes.

"This is a great opportunity for me. When an opportunity knocks you take it don't you?"