ChildRIGHT: Access to education for Traveller children

Basildon Council plans to evict a community of 400 Irish Travellers, including 100 children, from the Dale Farm site as the development is in breach of planning law. The High Court ruled last month that no human rights have been infringed, and that council bailiffs can now begin to eject 86 families of Irish Travellers from the 51 illegal pitches on Dale Farm. Essex Police are on standby for an operation that is estimated to cost £18m. The Travellers, who own the land but have not been granted planning permission, have said that they will resist the eviction.

Media coverage of the planned eviction has focused almost exclusively on the planning law and human rights aspects of the eviction. Much less attention has been paid to the detrimental effect that the eviction may have on the educational outcomes of the Traveller children.

Difficulties in securing a school place

The planned eviction at Dale Farm will mean that many of the children living on the farm may no longer be able to attend their current school. It will be necessary to find new school places for these children. However, as most schools will already have allocated their places in preparation for the new academic year, identifying a school with a place to offer may be difficult.

In addition, one of the admissions criteria for most schools is that a child must live within the catchment area for the school. In order to satisfy this criterion it is usually necessary to show some evidence of a fixed address, for example through registration on the electoral roll. As Travellers are by nature a transient group, it may be difficult to show residence within the catchment area.

This means that many of these Traveller children may be out of education for an extended period of time. Forced evictions of Traveller communities can have the effect of further impairing access to education for these children, resulting in poor educational outcomes and further entrenching social exclusion of a group that has been identified by Ofsted as "the most at risk in the education system."

In 2003, Ofsted reported that "the vast majority of Traveller pupils linger on the periphery of the education system".

This peripheral engagement with the education system is reflected in attendance levels for Traveller children in schools and higher education institutions. In 2003, Ofsted estimated that the average attendance rate for Traveller pupils is around 75 per cent, which is the lowest among all minority ethnic groups.

Access to education for secondary school-aged Traveller children appears to be a particular problem. In 2003, Ofsted estimated that around 12,000 Roma and Traveller children of secondary school age were not registered in school. Many are educated at home, where "the adequacy, suitability and quality of such provision is very uneven".

This lack of engagement with the education system has an impact on the educational achievement of Traveller children. In 1999, Ofsted reported that Roma and Traveller pupils had the lowest results of any ethnic minority group. The statistics bear this out. In 2003, more than 17 per cent of Irish Traveller pupils obtained no GCSE passes, which is almost three times the national average. In 2005, only 30 per cent of Irish Traveller pupils gained the expected level in writing at Key Stage 1. Only 22.5 per cent gained more than five A to C grades at GCSE, which is less than half the national average of 54.9 per cent.

In light of these statistics, it is hardly surprising that the parents of Travellers, who already feel a lack of belonging and sense of mistrust, may be reluctant to engage with the education system.

The Hampshire Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service has conducted a survey on the views of Traveller parents towards education. Many of these parents expressed a reluctance to engage with the education system.

Engagement and attendance

The government has made efforts, through a number of legal provisions, towards improving the educational access and attainment of children from Traveller communities:

• The School Admissions Code requires all local authorities to have an In Year Fair Access Protocol for admissions to school. This protocol should ensure that access to education is secured quickly for children who have no school place. As Traveller pupils may arrive outside the normal admissions round and may have difficulty securing a place, they are covered by the In Year Fair Access Protocol.
• The School Standards and Framework Act 1998 limits the size of an infant class (i.e. a class in which the majority of children will reach the ages of five, six, and seven during the school year) to 30 pupils per school teacher. However, an exemption is now provided for Travellers coming into an area for a brief period. This aims to improve access to education for Traveller children.
• The Pupil Registration Regulations prohibit schools from removing a child's name from the school roll unless the child has been absent from school for more than 20 consecutive school days, the absence is unauthorised, and the school and local authority do not know where the child is, and have not been able to locate the child after reasonable enquiry. This means that if the Traveller parents keep the school advised of the child's whereabouts, the school should not remove the child's name from the school roll.

However, the law could go further to promote access to education. Local authorities should be under an obligation, in situations such as that at Dale Farm, to make arrangements for new school places and to ensure that educational support is provided in the interim. Also, local authorities should be required to engage with all Traveller families living in or moving through their administrative area in order to identify and address any educational needs.

An effective monitoring system should also be developed, to measure and address levels of attendance and achievement of Traveller children, so that these issues can be addressed more effectively. Without such intervention, Traveller pupils will continue to linger on the periphery of the education system.