Women and Equalities Committee
Oral evidence: Tackling inequalities faced by Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, HC 360
Wednesday 12 September 2018
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 12 September 2018.
Members present: Mrs Maria Miller (Chair); Sarah Champion; Angela Crawley; Philip Davies; Vicky Ford; Eddie Hughes; Mr Gavin Shuker.
Questions 407–473
Witnesses
I: Professor Kalwant Bhopal, Professor of Education and Social Justice, University of Birmingham Centre for Research in Race and Education, David Bishop, Head of Services (Alternative Provision, Attendance and Independent Schools), Birmingham City Council, Sean Harford, Director for Education, Ofsted, Rose McCarthy, Chair, and Brian Foster, Executive member, Advisory Council for the Education of Romany and other Travellers.
Witnesses: Professor Bhopal, David Bishop, Sean Harford, Rose McCarthy and Brian Foster.
Q407 Chair: This is the third public oral evidence session for this inquiry on tackling inequalities faced by the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. This session is about education, including access to education, school culture, the role of Ofsted and educational outcomes. On behalf of the whole Committee, thank you for taking the time to be with us. We know how busy you are and the time that it takes to prepare for something like this. We are incredibly grateful. Apologies for starting slightly late. Time pressures are always an issue with Select Committees. Will each of you say your name and the organisation you are from?
Professor Bhopal: I am Kalwant Bhopal from the University of Birmingham.
David Bishop: I am David Bishop from Birmingham City Council.
Sean Harford: I am Sean Harford, one of Her Majesty’s inspectors and National Director for Education at Ofsted.
Rose McCarthy: I am Rosemary McCarthy from ACERT—the advisory council for Roma and all other Travellers.
Brian Foster: I am Brian Foster, and I am an executive member of ACERT.
Chair: Thank you all for being here. I am conscious of the fact that there are five of you, so please do not feel obliged to answer every question. I may need to intervene to speed things up a little bit, for which I apologise in advance.
Q408 Eddie Hughes: Statistics suggest that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities have the worst educational outcomes of any ethnic group. There were only 21 Gypsy, Roma and Traveller young people sitting A-levels in 2016. Does that match your experience?
Rose McCarthy: I would agree with that. I think Brian has the statistics at 16.
Brian Foster: We know that the statistics are bad. I don’t know whether you are aware that before 2003 there weren’t the ethnic categories. It was something that those of us involved in Traveller education campaigned for, because we knew that the educational situation of Gypsies and Travellers was pretty dire, but the only way we could achieve any change was for Government to be aware of that. That was the point at which we began to encourage Travellers to identify themselves, and when ethnic monitoring began.
The reason that the figures are so bad for them—they have been described as the victims of the last respectable form of racism—is, to be brief, that they have been socially excluded from education for, in the case of Gypsies, nearly 500 years. A process of inclusion needs to go on, and that process had begun and had made some progress, but there is a long way to go. That is the reason that the statistics are so appalling.
Q409 Eddie Hughes: You say that there is a long way to go, but has the situation got worse, or is it getting better?
Brian Foster: At primary stage, I would say that there is some evidence that the situation is getting better. I have got a graph—I don’t know whether this helps, but we can send it in later—on which you can see that the lower line is for the Gypsy and Roma and the upper line for the Irish Travellers. Until 2015 you can see that, although the lines are very, very widely apart, there is some narrowing of the gap. But the evidence at GCSE is that there is a huge gap and that it is not narrowing. I would say that we were making progress at primary level, but there is a really huge challenge at secondary.
Sean Harford: The issue at GCSE level, because the measures have changed—the curriculum changed recently—is that it is quite difficult to make any accurate comparison over time. The fact is that it is so low that any difference is very incremental.
David Bishop: I would agree with both colleagues. In terms of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller on roll in Birmingham, we seem to have a high percentage on roll, but the issue for us is the attendance levels. That would be another factor to take into account. Obviously, if the attendance isn’t high, achievement and attainment won’t follow.
Q410 Eddie Hughes: Okay. That leads smoothly on, possibly, to the next question. What is the biggest barrier to their success in education? Is that partly attendance, as well as other factors?
David Bishop: Attendance is obviously one factor. We find that there are cultural issues to do with education and going into school, and with some aspects of going into work, but what we find to be the biggest barrier is attendance at school.
Sean Harford: Exclusions are very high as well—exclusions, absence and a lack of previous education, certainly in the case of Roma children coming from eastern Europe—and there are elements of bullying and racism. There is a push and a pull factor here. Some schools push the children away and do not make them welcome, while with some the families are pulling the children away at the same time. It is a complicated picture, but those factors will overall have an impact.
David Bishop: In Birmingham, we have commissioned TEFL courses for teachers, to try to address an English language issue. That is at primary level, hoping that that will follow through. We have had some success with that but, of course, we are a city that has 455 schools, so rolling that out across the whole city is a big job. In terms of costs and so on, it is expensive for those numbers.
Professor Bhopal: It has been very well documented that there are a very small number of Traveller children who attend schools, but there are different reasons for that. First, the Traveller Education Services have been drastically reduced and the funding for them has been drastically cut throughout the UK. The Traveller Education Service played a vital advocacy role for the families, in relation to not just education but accommodation, health and other needs. That is one factor.
Secondly, the curriculum in schools does not address the needs of Traveller children. It is not an inclusive curriculum. It does not represent adequately Gypsy and Roma Traveller histories. In our research at Birmingham we found that many parents—and, indeed, children—talk about the ways in which they do not feel that they are represented within an inclusive curriculum. I think that is hugely important, because that would help to break down stereotypes and barriers that continually depict racism, especially in the media as well.
Finally, as my colleagues have already said, Gypsy and Traveller families, including children, experience huge amounts of racism and discrimination in schools, not just from their peers but from their teachers as well. There are various reasons for that. One of the things we need to address in taking these issues forward is for Ofsted to provide clearer guidelines on how racism is addressed in schools. Quite often when Traveller children complain about racism to their teachers, it is not seen as racism, because they are white groups. We need clearer guidelines on how this group is treated, and the discourse and narrative around how Gypsies and Travellers are treated.
Q411 Chair: Could I just ask a quick supplementary on that? I do not disagree with you; I am sure the Traveller Education Service was very important. But when that service was more readily available, was there significant improvement in the outcomes for young people and the attendance of young people? Because what Brian was talking about earlier tends to suggest, from the figures, that there was not a huge change or improvement to that point in time. How would you comment on that?
Professor Bhopal: Well, I wouldn’t say it was significant, in terms of what significant means. There is a lot of qualitative evidence to suggest that when Gypsy and Traveller children attend schools where there is a good quality Traveller Education Service and there are good community links—there has to be inter-agency work as well, with the family, the school and other agencies—parents trust the schools. Parents trust the schools to look after their children, so they send them to school.
Q412 Chair: But it doesn’t provide a quantifiable difference.
Professor Bhopal: I don’t think there are statistics on that, though I can check for you. What we are looking at is the outcome. What you are talking about are the GCSE results and key stages 3 and 2. We cannot look at this in isolation; we have to take a coherent picture. It has to start from building those positive relationships with families and how that works. As I said, they provide an advocacy link.
A solution that I would suggest is that we need ring-fenced funding for Traveller Education Services, because there is evidence to suggest that it makes a difference for parents sending their children to school in a safe environment. One of the issues that parents talk about is that they don’t feel their children are safe. If parents don’t feel their children are safe, they won’t send them to school. That’s the end of the story.
Q413 Chair: I sense, Brian, that you might want to come in on that. Rose, did you want to come in as well?
Rose McCarthy: I would agree about the safety of children at schools. If I can speak as an individual from the Irish Traveller community, I can say that the majority of Travellers are Catholic-faith families. Some of them find it quite difficult that what echoes at home does not echo in the school. The majority of the schools that the families are in are non-Catholic. I will not go on here about religion or faith, but I believe that as far as the lessons and the curriculum are concerned, for instance sex education, the Traveller families are quite against that kind of teaching within school. Those kinds of things are quite taboo and need to be dealt with at home.
That wouldn’t be a reason for not sending the children to school. The majority of Irish Traveller children who attend school do very well when they are in school. There are ones that unfortunately have had terrible bullying towards them and it is not the parents who are not willing to send the child to school; it is actually the child itself. That usually happens in late primary school or early secondary school.
Many of the reasons for the children being excluded from school at secondary level would be through—really and truly—no knowledge of the culture within schools, and also not recognising them as victims of bullying, only as the perpetrator. That is quite confusing, and eventually those children are excluded—that has been encouraged by particular teachers with a severe bad attitude to teaching. They encourage the families to have home education. Unfortunately, a lot of the families—I wouldn’t say most of them, but quite a lot of them—haven’t got the facilities or ability to be able to educate their children at home.
Brian Foster: You talk about quantitative evidence. The first thing is that it is very complicated. We have already mentioned attendance, bullying—a range of factors. The achievement is, if you like, the last thing to move. You referred to A-level results; they would be our success stories. There are only 21 of them. Basically, you only see good achievement at the end of the story.
I worked in Hackney until March of last year as a consultant and they had a Traveller Education Service—well, they still one, but it is down to, I think, one part-time post. But in that local authority, I saw two years running that the key stage 2 results were actually better than the average for Hackney. That is only 15 or 20 kids, so you can’t say an awful lot from that. It is a long process.
Just to talk about how Traveller Education Services work, I saw it as very much keeping the show on the road. In primary education, we were very much singing from the same hymn sheet as the Traveller families. They wanted their children in school; they wanted their children to read and write. They co-operated with us, and it was possible to get the children engaged and attending reasonably well.
In Hackney, there were very few behaviour issues in primary schools. At secondary, it was a completely different story. It was very demanding on time. The Traveller Education Service secondary workers telephoned all the time, to go and troubleshoot.
What has happened since 2010 is this. There is no collected evidence, but extrapolating from how many children are in primary schools, only 33% of the number of Irish Travellers who had been in primary are attending in secondary. That figure has got worse since 2010-11, and it is very easy to understand. When it begins to go pear-shaped, there is nobody around to sort it out.
We can also mention academies. There is very little influence over how they operate. There are some schools that are oaks—“This is how we are. If you don’t like our school, go somewhere else.” Fewer schools are willows, which are actually flexible.
What I am saying is this: no, we don’t have hard evidence, but we have quite robust soft evidence that what is lacking now is support for the community. When education breaks down, that is often the end of it.
Q414 Eddie Hughes: Irish Traveller children seem to do particularly badly, compared with Gypsy-Roma children. That is the evidence we have here; I’m not sure it is borne out by the graph you have.
Brian Foster: No, exactly.
Eddie Hughes: So with regard to the disparity between them, what is the evidence?
Brian Foster: I wouldn’t necessarily think that is the case. It may be an issue at secondary school, with more Irish Travellers dropping out in the secondary phase, but it may also be the fact that the Gypsy-Roma group has Roma, who tend to be fairly settled and, if they are in school, tend to stay there, and Gypsies. So I don’t think that is a productive line of inquiry, to be honest. I am not sure there is a—
Q415 Eddie Hughes: So if they are there and doing their exams, they are performing at roughly the same level, judging by the closeness of your graph—
Brian Foster: Slightly above.
Q416 Eddie Hughes: But the problem is that the drop-out level is higher for—
Brian Foster: And exclusion levels are higher for that group, but we don’t know whether Irish Travellers are excluded more than Gypsies; we know that Irish Travellers are excluded more than the Gypsy-Roma group together.
Q417 Eddie Hughes: Let’s move on. The ministerial working group on Gypsy and Traveller communities made six commitments on education. Have those commitments been fulfilled?
Sean Harford: There were a few recommendations in the report for us, and we followed that up partly through the “No place for bullying” report in 2012, but then more extensively in 2014 when we published a report and then a follow-up set of six case studies, which looked at the communities in different places. Some of what came out of that was positive.
I would like to say this about the area of commissions, reports and follow-up. A number of commissions have been put in place, reports have come out, recommendations have been made, there has been follow-up and there has been reasonably significant pump-primed funding from central Government to push things forward in certain areas, but what when that pump-primed funding ends and it is up to local authorities to decide whether they carry on with it, that seems to be when the initiatives slow down or cease. That is when any signs of improvement seem to start either dropping off or stagnating. It becomes a local authority choice, typically, as to where to allocate their funds. So there is some evidence that these things start to have an impact, but the sustainability does not seem to be there.
Q418 Eddie Hughes: Sorry, but I am not sure I completely got the answer to the question. There were six commitments. Have they been met?
Sean Harford: I am talking from an Ofsted point of view. We have met our commitments, which were to follow up the survey work and to publish that work; it was then for others to do with that what they will. So from Ofsted’s point of view, yes, we did meet those commitments.
Q419 Eddie Hughes: Brian, do you have a different perspective?
Brian Foster: Not on Ofsted. I think Ofsted has been one of the more positive things. There are two good Ofsted reports on Gypsies, Travellers and Roma; they are very helpful. I won’t say they discovered anything new, but they reasserted what we regard as good practice. I totally agree with that.
There was the virtual headteachers pilot. I would only say that it felt like there was no serious commitment. There were four posts originally. They were not full-time posts; I think the cost was about £30,000 for a local authority. So although those people had the status of headteachers—a colleague of mine was one of them, and he said that it was a benefit, being able to go into schools and talk to headteachers on a sort of level status—nevertheless it was not very much money. One was never appointed, but no alternative was found. In the end, I think that two and a half projects happened—one fell apart halfway through. Those two remaining projects wrote a report. I do not believe that report has been published.
The reality was that my colleague was covering the whole of Cambridgeshire on three days a week. I think Cambridge actually made it up to five days, because it was a very light-touch intervention. It was also focused only on schools. I am aware that I am going on about the ministerial working group, but I know that is one of your questions.
Basically, on the outside, we felt like that was a positive thing, but nobody was really interested in it as a pilot project. There was not any seriousness about it being disseminated widely and other people being encouraged to participate.
I am trying to remember what the other commitments were. I know at the time we felt that most of them had not been met.
Q420 Eddie Hughes: My follow-up question was going to be, on the assumption that some or all of them had been met, whether they had made any difference with regard to the educational outcomes for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. The ones that you feel have been met, have they made a difference?
Brian Foster: There were things like good Ofsted guidance. It may have made some difference. Ofsted inspectors have a weather eye open when they visit schools, and there have been some positive reports from Ofsted about schools that are doing good work with Gypsies, Roma and Travellers. At that level, that is a positive step.
Sean Harford: Commitment 1 in the report was to highlight them as a vulnerable group in the revised Ofsted framework, and there were a couple of revisions when we revised it in 2014 or 2015. There were a couple of revisions then. Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils were identified as one of the vulnerable groups, or a subsection of them. As such, inspectors are directed to pay particular attention to those pupils if they are in sufficient numbers to be able to draw any conclusions from that.
That is one of the issues around this, because the youngsters tend to be in quite small numbers and spread quite thinly, although there are large numbers in some schools. That commitment, in addition to the survey work, has absolutely been fulfilled. I have examples of where, if Traveller, Gypsy or Roma pupils are being treated particularly badly or particularly well in schools, we have reported publicly on those specific schools on those issues, so I know it is coming through in the framework.
Q421 Sarah Champion: Brian, can I bring you back to the virtual headteacher that you spoke about? Do you think it was successful, and do you think it should have been rolled out?
Brian Foster: Yes, it has the potential to be successful, but it focused very much on schools and it did not have any kind of inclusive function involving dialogue with the families. Also, in Cambridge, which is the one I know about, it actually overlapped very much with there having been a residual Traveller Education Service. It was good in so far as it targeted senior management on a mutual respect basis, and could share good practice and ideas.
Q422 Sarah Champion: Thank you. I will pause you there. Can I ask the rest of the panel for their opinion?
David Bishop: From Birmingham, our perspective is that we feel that a virtual headteacher role in this context would be positive. What we are concerned about is that a virtual headteacher role does not just have an analytical perspective. As has been said earlier, we would also be looking for a number of staff who would actually be working with the community. We spoke about doers doing the doing—making those connections, getting community partners involved and so on. The answer to your question is yes, with staff who are engaging very fully with the community.
Q423 Sarah Champion: Is that something that Birmingham could fund itself, or would you be looking for additional money?
David Bishop: I think we would need additional money. We have a colleague who heads up our GRT service. He does have a number of staff who go out into the community. We feel that one of our successes is that his staff are from the GRT community. He is also from the GRT community. We feel that there is an important role there in terms of role models and cultural identity.
Q424 Sarah Champion: To broaden the point, we spoke earlier about Traveller Education Services. We know from evidence we have received that that is kind of patchy, depending on what area you are in and the commitment that is given to it. Starting with Sean, do you have examples of good practice—where it has worked really well and where there are successes that could be replicated?
Sean Harford: Do you mean specifically on virtual headteachers?
Sarah Champion: No. In general, across the board.
Sean Harford: I would direct the Committee to the report that our national lead for English as an additional language has done—GRT comes under his role. He led that survey, which focused on Manchester, Derby and Sheffield. From that came some good practice. It identified some real issues, but there was also some good practice within that. For your evidence, that would be a good place to look for detail. Yes is the answer to your question in some respects, but as I said earlier, it is about sustainability and whether that continues over a long period, as opposed to being something that is focused on for a while and then people move away from it when funding priorities change, or there are different allocations from local authorities.
Q425 Sarah Champion: Professor, you spoke passionately about the topic of education services for Travellers. Have you got examples of where you think it has really worked well and made a difference and is embedded within schools?
Professor Bhopal: Yes. There are examples. I have a report here that I can send details of. It was published a while ago, but there are more recent examples, as David has said, where there is a member of the Traveller community who works as part of the Traveller Education Service. That is hugely important because the service provides the link with the families and the schools and other agencies. Families trust the Traveller Education Service; it provides them with uniforms, books and advice.
In some schools where there is good practice, the Traveller parents were invited into the schools on a regular basis. There is some good practice around the families being invited into the schools, although I don’t think once is enough. I think there has to be continuity of association and continuity of contact and communication, so that consequently, if the parents come in at primary school level once a term or once a year, they understand the school environment and feel confident that it is a safe environment. That will help, I think, the transition to secondary school, which I think Brian would agree is the biggest factor. That is where something happens and parents are reluctant to send their children to school.
As I have said, and I will repeat myself, we need ring-fenced funding for Traveller Education Services because it makes a huge difference in terms of making those initial links. It may not make a difference towards the end in terms of going to university, but that is a different issue that we can talk about.
Q426 Sarah Champion: You said in the transition from primary to secondary, something happens. I know you are a very good researcher, and a learned professor. Could you flesh out what you think, or what you have found, that that something is?
Professor Bhopal: During that period of transition from primary to secondary school, for many Traveller families, their children are seen as adults. When they go into the teenage years, they are seen as adults. For some families, boys and girls are expected to do gender-divided tasks, although that is significantly changing. For instance, parents do not want to send their daughters to school because they will be engaging in sex education and PE, and they will be in environments where they feel that their children will be unsafe.
We also need to take a step back and think about how education is defined. Education is defined very differently by Traveller communities. The discourse, in terms of how we define education for children who go to school, is also different. Learning traditionally takes place in the home; I know we will talk about home education later on. Many Traveller families and children are not used to structured learning—for example, sitting at tables and putting their hand up. Learning has a different form—it is about learning skills—but they still want their children to have an education. Contrary to what we have already said, there are changes. Parents do want their children to go to school and get an education, but only if they feel safe and only if their needs are recognised around exclusion, marginalisation and racism.
Q427 Sarah Champion: David, is your team trusted within the community?
David Bishop: Very much so.
Q428 Sarah Champion: How do you measure success?
David Bishop: One measure of success is the community getting in touch on a daily basis with the team. That recognises the dialogue that goes on between them. Another success was our team going out into schools, working with schools and giving training to them. In terms of Ofsted measures, we would want to look at achievement and attainment in school, attendance and exclusions. Those would be other measures of success. Currently, I do not have the comparators for those figures, in terms of quantifiable success, but I will aim to get those and send them on to you.
The points made by all colleagues about the softer skills are really important. I particularly endorse the comments made about the final destination of GCSEs and A-levels, which is excellent, and the level of confidence. The beginning of a phase of going into school and starting a tradition or expectation that children will go into school, stay in school and be successful in various ways is really important for setting up that trend for families, just as all families have that basis of expectation in different ways.
Q429 Sarah Champion: Rose, all the panellists have spoken about the budgetary constraints on educational support. With that in mind, what do you think should be the absolute basic level of support that Irish Traveller and Gypsy children are given to support them into education, to stay in education and to succeed in education?
Rose McCarthy: It has to start at nursery level. I know Ofsted does not do reports at nursery level. Quite a lot of our children attend nurseries. Within the nurseries, there are some GRT young women, who are assistants to the practitioners with the nursery. The majority of these nurseries are private. I would like to see some kind of structure, perhaps an apprenticeship, for them to hopefully become a practitioner—that will be a GRT girl or male. I would like some kind of funding there, to support them at that level.
Also, within our schools, at secondary level, I would like to believe that we could have more parents’ evenings. We have a parents’ evening once a year. Not so much in primary school, but in secondary school, I think it is crucial that we have the confidence building for the families. We should encourage GRT families specifically to come in more than once—I would say three to four times—a year. I think the community would welcome that. I can imagine that could be very, very difficult for people who are travelling around in caravans and are not sure where they are stopping. There needs to be an outreach from the school, so that it has its meetings where the Traveller people are—on their sites, even if that is at the side of the road—and brings that information to the families.
Q430 Sarah Champion: So for you the families are the key. You have the relationship with the families.
Rose McCarthy: Yes, exactly. If they are settled families—when I say settled families, it could be families living on sites or in houses—the families should be encouraged to come to school. Also, on poverty, there are an awful lot of families there on benefits; due to discrimination and racism we are not able to find employment. They suffer terribly; parents might not be able to afford a uniform for their children. This is a big issue and it has been shunted aside for many years now, but a majority of children—certainly Irish Traveller children, who I can speak for—have been excluded from school because of their neglect of the uniform. And the reason why that has happened is that in secondary school, you actually get bad marks if you haven’t got your tie on you, or if you haven’t got your blazer on. That may be extended to a Saturday detention, or maybe an hour, or even up to two hours’, after-school detention. Now, that is traumatic for that child, and it is very inconvenient and very worrying for the families, so that needs to be supported. I think the school rules on detention don’t have any consideration for the GRT families. That is what I have to say on that.
I think the support needs to be put there. Funding needs to be put into nurseries, and primary also; GRT children need to be encouraged to go further into education; there should be assistance in the classroom; and I would also encourage tests. Once again, I believe that Travellers’ teachers did do a great job for the Travelling children, and for their families. That was what was needed; they needed that connection.
Sean Harford: For the record, Ofsted do inspect nurseries, in both the private and voluntary sector—you would not know this necessarily—and also the maintained sector. So if issues were coming out in nursery schools, they would indeed be identified, in the same way as they would in a normal school intervention.
Rose McCarthy: My daughter is a practitioner in a nursery, and in the private sector, yes, of course Ofsted do report, but there were never any ticking-boxes for GRT.
Sean Harford: Except it certainly wouldn’t be ticking boxes; it would be looking at the group—
Rose McCarthy: Sorry for my expression.
Sean Harford—as all other groups would be considered if there was discrimination or poor provision. That would be certainly identified.
I understand what Rose says about the uniform issue—I think you said particularly for secondary pupils. I need to say something from the school’s point of view here. A school will set a uniform policy because it is absolutely their right to do so. I totally understand the issue around the cost of uniform, etc., which is not a unique issue to GRT or Irish Traveller families; it is a general issue around poverty. The reasons schools do it, if they do set a uniform policy, is to try to get a conformity of approach and a way of setting an ethos in a school. It is absolutely their right to do so. I understand why some children might find the sanction behind that “traumatising”—I think you used that word, Rose—but if you are going to send your child to school and there are certain basic rules, they need to be considered.
Q431 Sarah Champion: Sure. I’m going to stop you there, because we have limited time, and we are specifically looking at and speaking now about the Traveller Education Services, and whether there are any minimum expectations that ought to be put in place to be met. Do you have any comment on that point?
Sean Harford: Local authorities need to make allocation decisions. They are given autonomy to do so, and they need to make those decisions. It is up to them to do it, and then go on the outcomes.
Q432 Sarah Champion: So from an Ofsted point of view or a Government policy point of view, you don’t think that a minimum standard should be set.
Sean Harford: I repeat what I say: there are different needs in local authorities across the country. They are not uniform, so to set some kind of standard where somebody says, “Well, we have to provide this” when they clearly don’t need to would be nonsense. The idea is that you should give the autonomy to local authorities to make the right decision in the context they are in.
Brian Foster: I spent most of my career working in Traveller Education Services, and in some ways I see it from both sides, in so far as only very late in my career, from 2005 onwards, was Traveller education genuinely included in national policy making. In a way, it was included only for about three years, because 2008 became a key date when ring-fencing of Traveller education funding was removed. From that point, basically when anybody retired, or when there was any kind of reorganisation, Traveller education became smaller. I don’t think it should just be left to local authorities unless they have a real duty.
The second thing I want to say is that I am involved in Traveller education basically because I believe in inclusive education. I have been known to call the national strategies Stalinist. I am not a great supporter of the national strategies, but nevertheless a set of documents were created that are, I think, agreed good practice. There was also a research report that I was involved in, which was published in 2010, on improving outcomes for Gypsy-Roma Travellers. Again, that looked at secondary schools and saw what they were doing, and that gives us good practice. We know what good practice is. Whether that has to be done by Traveller Education Services or whether there is another way, I am not decided, but what needs to be done is some sort of outreach function to the families.
We want inclusive schools, and I don’t think we have them at the moment, but we also need mediation and negotiation with the families to get them on side and to get them into schools. It is a very proactive thing that has to happen. Traveller Education Services, although I have criticisms, were making a reasonable fist of that. In that sense, we miss them.
Q433 Angela Crawley: Ofsted inspections have been used as a tool to assess and improve schools’ effectiveness, but how effective do you think they have been for Gypsy and Traveller children?
Sean Harford: As I partly said earlier, where there are sufficient numbers of the youngsters to be able to draw a conclusion, either good or bad, I think it has been effective. I have examples of where we have identified schools that are outstanding in the way they work with the communities. We have also identified instances where the schools are not outstanding. For example, there was a school where one of my colleagues found that Traveller children were put into a unit 7 miles away from the school and were basically given the worst teachers to teach them, because that was a way of solving the school’s issues with teacher quality. This was identified, and the school was placed in special measures. The monitoring HMI who followed up on the special measures then identified that those children had been moved back into the mainstream school and were being taught. The school subsequently closed anyway, because it was poor across the board.
Where these things are happening, we are identifying them, but we need to be pragmatic about this, and the number of pupils from which you can draw a conclusion needs to be high enough. I know that inspectors’ radars are sparked for the issue, as they are with other groups of vulnerable children. It has certainly improved, but it is probably best when you can see the worst cases and the best cases of work. In between, there is probably some work to do in teasing that out, but again it does come back to numbers.
Q434 Angela Crawley: What training do your inspectors get in understanding, for example, the challenges of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller peoples? Do they get specific training?
Sean Harford: Not specifically for that group of children, but they do get training in vulnerable groups and equalities. Last week we trained all our HMI and Ofsted inspectors for schools across the country, and one of the sessions was on equalities. Being a vulnerable group, GRT youngsters will of course be within that. It is more about training inspectors on how to spot if there are issues for particular vulnerable groups and then what you do to follow that up with the school to try to tease out whether it is a problem or, conversely, whether it is great practice.
We do not train specifically for GRT, although we do have our EAL HMI national lead who is very expert in the area of GRT as well as EAL. He gives me regular reports on what is going on in this area of the sector’s work. We also inform inspectors through our publication School inspection update, which is a termly update. We had a specific article on this area in March this year. That is the way we keep inspectors up to date in this area.
Q435 Angela Crawley: You mentioned that Gypsy, Roma and Traveller peoples are recognised as a vulnerable group for Ofsted inspections. What difference has that made in how the inspections are conducted? Has it improved outcomes? Do you have a measure of outcome?
Sean Harford: We spoke about the outcomes earlier. We really need to identify what Ofsted’s role is here. It is to identify where possible where there are things going on that are great or not so great and then to flag those up in our public reports. It is for others to pick that up and make changes to improve things. We are not an improvement agency. Equally, if we claimed that improvements were happening because of Ofsted, that would probably be equally tenuous. What we can point to is the fact that we have identified GRT pupils as a vulnerable group and we inspect the provision for them as we do for other vulnerable groups.
Q436 Angela Crawley: Coming on to the fair access protocol, how effective has it been in ensuring access to school places for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller peoples?
Sean Harford: That is not really a thing for Ofsted.
David Bishop: From our perspective in Birmingham, we need to improve, essentially. One of the issues with the fair access protocol is the timescales. We have identified that it needs to be sped up in terms of getting children through the fair access protocol. Particularly with a mobile community, it may be that the referral is made for a GRT child and three or four weeks down the road, that GRT child has moved on to another area, so there is now a new address or something like that. Although we do have “successes”—I put that in inverted commas—we are quite realistic that we do need to improve in that area. As a city council, we also need to look at the ability of schools to knock back children by not allowing them into the school, and how fairness presents in real life.
Rose McCarthy: I would like to comment on fairness. If the Traveller families are settled or eventually get settled—maybe they have just come out of caravans and want to settle in a home—it is quite easy for them to apply to a school. That was the original way—apply to the school. Should they get turned away, they would try somewhere else.
At the moment, things are changing. They have to apply to local authorities. That is not too bad for the ones who are settled, but for the ones who are on site or travelling, there is a new strategy coming through—I believe it is in place now—for negotiated stopping.
Negotiated stopping is only for 28 days, and I believe it takes around that length of time while you apply to the local authority to get access to school. So there are very big difficulties there. I know this is not about accommodation, but I would make a recommendation for permanent sites to be built, so that the children have proper access to schools to be educated.
Brian Foster: There is a positive, which is that I think Travellers are treated more fairly under the fair access protocol, though it takes longer.
There is something that might be useful for you to understand. There is quite a lot of mobility among families who are in housed accommodation: poverty, discrimination from neighbours, maybe they’ve been homeless and are moving through into housed accommodation.
When I was involved in Traveller education, the people who moved least where those on the official Traveller sites, living in caravans. The families who moved quite a lot were the ones in housing. If they have to wait a month or so, or often even more than that, to get another place when they move, it does disrupt education. I totally agree with what David was saying, but it is a good thing, because it is fairer.
Rose McCarthy: Yes, I would agree with that, Brian. I would also say that for those who are in houses, should they have come off the road or out of sites—I can’t see the reasons why they would want to come out of a permanent site—when they do move into housing, they are accommodated in short-stay or privately rented accommodation. A lot of the families are in poverty and claim housing benefit. Because of the cuts in housing benefit, they are losing their tenancies, because they cannot afford to keep up with the private rent, therefore they become homeless again. Once again, it is a vicious circle for them. I do believe that families applying through this route, to the local authorities, is a lot fairer than the family going to schools and making an application for their child to be educated there.
Q437 Chair: Before we move on to the next question, can I ask David something? You said that you need to improve when it comes to fair access, but I did not understand how you are going to improve and when.
David Bishop: We need to improve the speed of the panels.
Q438 Chair: How do you do that?
David Bishop: It would be within the city council, driving forward new scheduled dates for fair access panels.
Q439 Chair: Why isn’t that a priority? Why is it not happening already?
David Bishop: I need to come back to you on that question.
Q440 Chair: If you know it is taking a month and that is too long, that is not news to you, so it is surprising that you have not put something in place to change that.
David Bishop: It is partly because it is quite complex in terms of organisation, but of course organisations can be changed.
Q441 Chair: So the organisation needs to have the will to change.
David Bishop: Yes.
Q442 Chair: I have a question for Sean. You have talked a lot about the fact that GRT children are in a vulnerable group. Do you think that by talking about GRT children in that way, in a very general way, you are losing some of the specific issues that this group of children face?
Sean Harford: That is a fair question. The vulnerability bit is because of the issue of moving school regularly and not necessarily having a sustainable education, which makes them vulnerable. Clearly, you are right in that those youngsters who are settled and attend school well can achieve well.
Q443 Chair: Does there need to be an organisation picking that group out more specifically? Would that improve their outcomes? Would that help?
Sean Harford: I don’t know. I don’t have the evidence. We do focus specifically when they are a group in a school.
Q444 Chair: I see, for instance, that your “No place for bullying” report only mentions Travellers once in a case study. We know that bullying is one of the biggest barriers to children being in education, yet your report has almost ignored them.
Sean Harford: One of the reasons why we followed that up with a set of more specific reports a couple of years later was because of that hole.
Q445 Chair: But how could an organisation like yours produce a report that almost ignores the group that suffer bullying the most? That surely shows a lack of focus on them as a group.
Sean Harford: That report, and the survey that produced it, was a more general report about bullying. I would not be able to agree with you and say that GRT pupils are the most bullied group of those that we looked at. At that time there was quite a lot of focus in that report on LGBT pupils, for example, and there was lots of evidence to say that they were being bullied and that homophobic bullying was a big thing.
I think the issue was that, in response to the working committee, we thought we could look at a part of the GRT issue within that overarching report, but then move on to something much more specific, which is what we did. The second report and those case studies were as a result of us then engaging with GRT communities in those specific cities, so it was then much more targeted around the needs of those youngsters.
Philip Davies: We have heard numerous reasons given for why Gypsy or Traveller pupils drop out of school, often before starting secondary education. We have already heard this morning the reasons why: because they are victims of bullying and racism; because they are socially excluded; because of the stereotypes; because of funding cuts for specialist services; because we do not have GRT history taught properly; because of sex education and PE being taught in schools; because of uniform policies and the trauma of detention. The list of excuses is endless, and all of those examples have one thing in common. None of them are the responsibility of the Gypsy and Traveller communities themselves. Is there any responsibility here on the families and communities themselves? Is there anything at all where they are at fault or responsible for the poor educational outcomes and the dropping out of school, or is someone else always to blame?
Rose McCarthy: We all have a responsibility as parents, and I believe that it is not just the GRT communities who have responsibility, but the wider community. The wider community probably tends to be a lot more absent from schools than the GRT. As far as the GRT parent is concerned, yes, there were times when they probably were not encouraging their children to go to school, but times have changed now.
We have younger parents who are very much for education and very much encouraging their children to go on to further education and higher education. I have had one daughter go to university. I have also had a daughter who got her higher education at apprenticeship level—she has had an apprenticeship—and she is now a practitioner in a nursery. There are several parents like myself who I could name. Things have changed.
Yes, of course, there are parents, as I said, like other parents in the wider community, who do not encourage their children to go to school, but the ones who do encourage their children to go to school are very disappointed with the majority of what happens in school. It is not about the school but what happens in the school, and what is happening in the school is bullying, discrimination and racism.
Sean Harford: I would clarify something I said earlier: this was not about it being everybody else’s fault. What I said was that while some schools push away pupils, actually, a number of families from the community pull away their children from school. Rose gave an example earlier about the way sex education is taught in schools, and how families do or do not take that up. That is not actually a particularly GRT issue, frankly. There are quite a number of religious groups who will also try to withdraw their children from sex education. The issue is that they still have good attendance.
There is an issue here. I was speaking earlier about the uniform issue, and again, that is something that families need to commit to if they go to a school to make the rules of the school work. I do not think it is fair to say that we all said that it is all everybody else’s fault apart from the community and the families.
Rose McCarthy: No—everybody’s got responsibilities.
Brian Foster: I would just like to say, from when we worked in Traveller education, that it is very much a two-way process. Sometimes we were frustrated by the schools not being co-operative and flexible, and sometimes we were equally frustrated by the families. The point is that we were engaged in a dialogue, and our aim was the wellbeing of the children, so we were actually trying to find solutions. We are not interested in blaming anybody, and we are not particularly interested in exonerating everybody.
I would like to say that almost every, if you like, role model Traveller I know has had a bumpy ride through education at some point or other, as Rose described. The problem is that the default setting within the community is still, “Oh, stay at home. We’ll educate our own children.” Unfortunately, you actually need a negotiation to move on from that point. You need to reassure people. That is what the Traveller Education Service did, and we were making progress in actually getting bums on seats. We were not necessarily making noticeable progress in terms of achievement—there was too much to be done.
The other thing is that it is very easy to see this as being about a single group, but we are talking about individual families who are coping with life in various ways, and about a culture. In a sense, that is what schools have to engage with, and not see all Travellers as the same.
Very quickly, I will give an anecdote. There was a school that described itself as having 15 children who were Travellers. There were actually 45 Travellers in that school, but 15 had poor attendance and bad behaviour, and they were regarded as the Travellers. The other families, who were quietly getting on and whose kids were progressing through education, were no longer regarded as Gypsies and Travellers, because they were like us. We need to avoid generalising the group and instead support individual families to get the best for their kids.
Q446 Philip Davies: Let me throw this in. This was from the Children’s Society report, which seems to me, as a layman, more likely to be a bit more on the money to be perfectly honest. It found that the reason why many of these pupils dropped out was because: “Families did not place value on formal schooling, considering anything beyond basic literacy to be a waste of their children’s time. Formal qualifications did not feel relevant to Gypsy and Traveller families, many of whom were involved in traditional forms of self-employment and these families prefer to teach their children the skills of their trade, which were not available to them in formal schooling.” Is that not likely to be a bit more on the money as to why so many Gypsy and Traveller families drop out of school, rather than what we have heard this morning?
Professor Bhopal: Of course parents have a responsibility to send their children to school and many Gypsy and Traveller parents do want to send their children to school—
Philip Davies: And many don’t.
Professor Bhopal: Can I finish? They do want their children to have an education. There is evidence that there are small numbers—the numbers are very small, because Traveller children do not disclose their identity—making that transition to university and getting degrees. The fear of disclosure of identity is because of the repercussions around racism. We need to step back and look at the structural issues and problems that we have in society towards this group. It is not just about education. We have to take a holistic perspective and relate this to policy making around the accommodation, mobility, health and mental health of this particular group. Policy making works to disadvantage Traveller groups. If we can provide a decent quality education for other groups, why can we not provide it for this group?
Q447 Philip Davies: I have just said why. I just read out the report from the Children’s Society. Are you saying that that is completely wrong and you do not recognise anything that was in that report?
Chair: Phillip, can you clarify whether that was a report done with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller parents?
Philip Davies: Yes. Do you not recognise that?
Professor Bhopal: Of course, there are some families who make those decisions. But, again, I think we are falling into the trap of generalising the whole group. Instead of looking at structural issues—the way that schools are run and the way that teachers are not trained in this particular area—we are blaming the families. I think that is an incorrect discourse and narrative.
Q448 Philip Davies: So it’s everyone else’s fault, not the families?
Professor Bhopal: Your use of language is extremely interesting. I have just said that we have to look at the structural issues in the schools. We are able to provide education for other groups, aren’t we?
Q449 Philip Davies: Let me throw another one in there, then. This is from a chap called John Grant, an RSPCA chief inspector, who is from an Irish Traveller family himself. Maybe this isn’t true either. He said: “Travellers don’t pay taxes in general.” He is a Traveller himself. He is from this community. “I would say 95% don’t pay any taxes. A lot of their money is held in new motors, new caravans and good-quality horses.” Is that true or untrue? Does he not know what he is talking about?
Rose McCarthy: What does that have to do with education?
Q450 Philip Davies: Well, because it has to be paid for. It is all very well saying that we need more funding for this, that and the other. Where do you think the funding comes from? It comes from taxed income, so if people are not paying their taxes, maybe that is why we haven’t got the money to do these things. That is what it has to do with education.
Rose McCarthy: I object completely to what you are saying.
Q451 Philip Davies: Is Mr Grant from that Traveller family—
Brian Foster: He’s one person.
Philip Davies: So he doesn’t know what he is talking about?
Rose McCarthy: I could not say whether that man knows what he is talking about or not, but you cannot accept what this man has said to be true.
Q452 Philip Davies: What proportion would you say?
Rose McCarthy: It’s not untrue, but you cannot say that it is true either.
Chair: Rose, I hate to cut you off. I am going to cut Philip off from this line of questioning, because it is not to do with education really.
Philip Davies: It is to do with education—it is about paying for it. One of the reasons we heard was that there is not any money for funding that.
Rose McCarthy: Okay, so if we are going to look at that, the majority of GRT are living in homes. They pay their taxes and their rent.
Q453 Philip Davies: Is there a difference between boys and girls in the attitude of Traveller families and education?
Rose McCarthy: In what sense?
Q454 Philip Davies: In terms of them being sent to school or being withdrawn from school. Would there be a difference between the way that boys and girls in a Gypsy or Traveller family are treated?
Rose McCarthy: Traditionally, yes, but today in the modern world, no. Times have changed. No, there isn't.
Philip Davies: No difference at all.
Rose McCarthy: No. Not at this moment.
David Bishop: In many cultures, there are differences between boys and girls in terms of attitudes towards education. You have spoken about cultural approaches to education. One of the things that we should be aspiring to is providing an inclusive education for all, which means that everyone is treated in an equal way.
Professor Bhopal: Education is a right, not a privilege. Everybody should have a decent education, regardless of their ethnic background.
Q455 Philip Davies: David Bishop, maybe you might be able to best explain this. In cases where Gypsy and Traveller children are not attending school—maybe Sean Harford might have something to say—why is the law not being more effectively enforced to make sure that they do attend school? It is a legal requirement for them to attend school.
David Bishop: We do apply the SAOs to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, so in Birmingham we do apply the law. In terms of the number of SAOs that are applied, the number that we issue for the Gypsy, Roma and Traveller community makes up 18% of the total. We do apply the law to them but, equally, in terms of a model of working, we want to work with the community and bring them with us and into education rather than use a stick approach. The approach of drawing people to honey we have found very successful not only with our GRT work, but also in the work we do with elective home education. It is a dual-track approach, to one destination.
Q456 Chair: Can I ask a specific question? The Education Act says that children do not need to attend school regularly if their parents are travelling for work. The ministerial working group recommended revisiting that section to see if removing it would make a difference to school attendance. The Government decided to keep the provision. Do you think that was right? David?
David Bishop: I am not entirely sure that it was, but equally—
Q457 Chair: So you think it should be removed so that more children would have gone to school?
David Bishop: Well, I think more children should be attending school, yes.
Q458 Chair: How about you, Sean?
Sean Harford: I think this is balanced, actually. There are deterrents for schools. For legitimate Travellers, losing this would be a deterrent, but we do know that there is some abuse of this. When we look at registers when we inspect schools, one of the things we will look at is the use of the T code. There are pros and cons to whether it stays or goes.
Q459 Chair: Rose, I think from listening to you closely that you would argue that this provision is helpful. Sean has just said it is sometimes abused.
Rose McCarthy: It is sometimes.
Q460 Chair: What do you feel about that, when it stops children getting the education your children clearly got?
Rose McCarthy: I believe that when it comes to the fair people—the circus—it is crucial that this is in place. They have to take their children out of mainstream school. They have packages done for their children, which is ideal. It would be a great disadvantage to that particular group of Gypsies and Travellers.
In saying that, I really truly don’t agree with home education.
Q461 Chair: We’re going to come on to home education. I am just talking about when it is abused—when children don’t go to school and there isn't a good reason for it.
Rose McCarthy: Oh, I beg your pardon. It is only natural that you’d like to know what was happening there. There could be concerns at home. There could be many issues and faults at home. I would like to believe that the local authorities would be able to see to that, especially in the long term, and if children are going missing. I would understand the local authorities being involved in that.
Q462 Chair: You mentioned the issue of home education. Panel, do you think that elective home education is an effective way of educating young people, including Gypsy-Roma Traveller children? Who has a view on that?
Professor Bhopal: Home education is a very tricky issue because there are no national guidelines or policies on home education. Each local authority has its own guidelines on home education, so it is very difficult to know what the real numbers are. The numbers that we have at the moment are probably the tip of the iceberg. Parents from all different backgrounds home educate for a variety of reasons. From the numbers that we have, there has been an increase across the board.
Taking Traveller families, elective home education is often a means that families turn to for all the reasons we have talked about this morning. The families don’t provide them with an education. Also, we need to say here that there is a tradition of home education in Traveller families anyway, and it is something that continues, but what we found in our research on home education is that Traveller families home educate for reasons of racism, families not understanding them, et cetera, but they tend to use home tutors. Many of them will use home tutors.
What is particularly interesting about home education is how this particular group is perceived compared with how, for instance, a white middle-class family is perceived if they are home educating. Gypsy and Traveller families, when they are home educating, are perceived as being at risk, whereas other families are not, so a cost-effective measure—
Q463 Chair: There will be other groups, I’m sure, seen as at risk as well.
Professor Bhopal: There are other groups—that is just one example. One of the recommendations that we would make around home education is that a cost-effective measure would be for tutors to be paid for if this is a route that Traveller families are going to take. That would be very cost-effective for education departments.
Q464 Chair: David, we have heard of one very practical way that we could make home education more effective. Is that what you do in Birmingham?
David Bishop: We have mentors who go out to the elective home education families to see if suitable education is being provided, “suitable” being the legislative word. In terms of figures, there are 210,000 children in Birmingham. Of that, 1,400 are home educated. If we were looking for actual ways to move forward, some way of providing an online education would be very practical, as well as the home tutors. We have online education with a number of companies. We use one company in particular to support children who are being home educated and other groups as well who are vulnerable.
Q465 Chair: In terms of your area locally, over the years what have you wished you had in terms of powers to make sure that you knew home education was more effective? Have you ever thought, “If only the law said this”? Is there any change you’d make to the law so you could ensure that children were being properly educated at home?
David Bishop: One of the frustrations is that we don’t actually have any power to see the family, as it were. That is a frustration. The way we have overcome that in Birmingham is, as I said earlier, by drawing people to us and making sure that we provide a service that people want.
For example, we have held an elective home education conference where people can benefit from various things. In the summer we had a summer school for elective home educated families where we actually taught parents how to teach their families. We see this as a way to reduce NEET numbers, if families are able to teach their own families effectively. We are putting our resource into that. That is an investment that we see as important.
Q466 Chair: How about Ofsted? Do you think you should have a more proactive role in this area?
Sean Harford: I certainly think there should be a registration system that can then track through to the groups of pupils that are being home-educated—so, like an ethnicity grouping—so local authorities and everyone else could tell, “How many? Where are they? What kinds of families do they come from?” That would help local authorities to target them, for example.
I don’t think we want to start going into parents’ homes to inspect them, frankly, because you said yourself that this is a wider group than GRT pupils and some parents are better set up to do this than others. We support the parents’ right to do this, but it’s got to be right for the child and I think that’s the bit that’s missing at the moment—not knowing where they are.
Q467 Chair: So Ofsted don’t see themselves as having a role to play in making this more effective?
Sean Harford: I don’t think anybody, including Ofsted itself, wants us going into parents’ homes and checking the education of individual parents.
Q468 Chair: So you think it’s a local authority function?
Sean Harford: But they need a registration system to enable them to do it.
David Bishop: And we do have that.
Sean Harford: But not by ethnicity.
David Bishop: We do, actually.
Sean Harford: It’s not law.
David Bishop: Yes. The other thing is that we have mentors who go into the families and actually talk, at quite a length, about their education, and so on. This is obviously a safeguarding issue, as well.
Q469 Chair: So what percentage of home-educated children in Birmingham will get a mentor?
David Bishop: 1,400—100%.
Chair: 100%?
David Bishop: Yes.
Q470 Chair: Okay. Great. Rose, what do you think about this? I mean, home education—do you think it actually works? It sounds like your children weren’t home-educated.
Rose McCarthy: No, my children weren’t home-educated. I believe that it can work, in some cases, with support. If the local authorities need to send mentors out, I think that would be ideal for families who need that support.
All in all, however, I do not agree with home education, mainly because of nomadic families. I believe that if something was put in place, the choice would be taken away. There would be more encouragement for the Travellers—the GRT families—to be home-educated, and we know that can become an abuse in the long run.
I’d like to think that if the children are going to be home-educated in any particular families, they are well checked out, the support is there and Ofsted is involved. But in saying that, I’d like to think there has to be a balance within the school itself in the attitudes of the teachers, especially when it comes to behaviour problems. The parents usually have no knowledge of home education, or how it works, but they have their child at home so they are no longer getting abused or bullied in the school. It is a way of taking the child out of the school and the teachers saying to them, “Yes, you can do this. Your child doesn’t have to come to school any longer. You will be supported”, but without there being any kind of back-up or support. That’s what I’m against. I’m afraid there are a few schools out there that mean this system will get abused, not just by the families themselves but by the schools.
Brian Foster: There was the Badman report, which was close to being enacted as law in 2010, but it was lost in the wash-up just before the election of 2010. We supported that report, which was essentially saying that local authorities should have a role very similar to the one that I think Birmingham is taking voluntarily by actually providing some support.
Also, we would support the registration of home-educated families. In my opinion, it is a loophole that Traveller families are opting to go through, and in many cases they are not providing an education. In an authority like Tower Hamlets, for example, where I worked, they were proactive and visited families, and they made a judgment that the education was inadequate and made school attendance orders. Eventually, perhaps through home tuition centres, a way was found for those young people to re-engage with education.
Obviously some parents home educate because ideologically they want to do that, but from my experience in Tower Hamlets—it was not just Travellers—a lot of families did not get the school they wanted, or there were all sorts of situations. Local authorities need to engage with that and make appropriate placements so that children can re-engage with education.
Q471 Mr Shuker: We have taken evidence that suggests that bullying of GRT pupils is endemic in schools. Would anyone disagree with that assertion?
Brian Foster: Sort of. Parents worry about children. Bullying exists in schools, and we want schools to deal with it appropriately. But I have known Traveller children who felt they could deal with it in school, but their parents were the ones who were most fearful.
We did some research that found that safety and trust was the key issue. Where education worked well, parents trusted the schools, and where bullying happens there is a breakdown of trust. So I think it is a bigger issue for the parents than for the young people. Again, it needs to be dealt with constructively. The parents need to feel that the school will deal with it and keep their children safe. Unfortunately, at the moment what tends to happen is that parents withdraw their children and then nothing changes, including their perceptions.
Q472 Mr Shuker: That is really helpful. In what ways should schools change their culture to avoid situations like that? How do the best schools that are inclusive of the GRT community do that?
Sean Harford: They would do it in the methods they use typically at the transition between primary and secondary school. They are not very different from how you would work with most youngsters making that transition, frankly. Good schools do this.
To go back to your last question, I do not want it on record that we agree with you. Our evidence is not that bullying of GRT pupils is endemic. There are issues in places, but it is not endemic.
So the transition between primary and secondary is a really important point, but of course the issue for many of these youngsters is that they are not transitioning at that point. Therefore, good schools will make sure that when a youngster comes into their school, there is a proper induction for them. We have seen good examples in the reports we have done in the past of buddying up with pupils. A simple example is that there will be trustworthy youngsters in the school already—not necessarily the gifted and the talented pupils; just ordinary children who are identified as being good at this—and they buddy them up and work with them. They then put them in the right classes to give them the right support educationally and make that smooth transition. That is the kind of thing that works well.
David Bishop: The other thing is that schools will treat pupils with equality. The expectations of attendance, attainment and achievement and the aspirations are the same as for any other group. So inclusivity and equality of treatment is the way successful schools deal successfully with any vulnerable group, be it GRT or any other group.
Q473 Mr Shuker: You have both mentioned approaches that presumably are best practice for all pupils regardless of their background. For the purposes of this inquiry we are interested in whether there are any other stand-out cultural issues within schools specifically for GRT pupils. For example, does celebrating GRT History Month have some kind of effect? Are there ways in which schools can make the transition more straightforward?
Professor Bhopal: In terms of good practice, to go back to the role of the TES, they were were very good at providing inset for teachers—educating teachers about Traveller families, history and so on. In one good school that we went to, where there was good practice, a visit to Appleby, for instance, was celebrated—almost as Black History Month was celebrated. I think that is really important in providing affirmative, positive messages about this particular group.
Another example of good practice that is a practical measure is a sanctuary or safe space for Traveller children to go to where they know that they can talk about particular issues that affect them. For this particular group—if, for instance, the girls are worried about having sex education at secondary school—there should be a sanctuary territory or safe place or one individual they can go to. In primary schools where there was good practice, that individual was a Traveller Education Service teacher.
Rose McCarthy: Yes, I would agree with that. GRT History Month is one very positive way for GRT children to feel that they are worthy of being in school, that who they are is worthy, because through history, as is well known, we have not been recognised as people, we have not been recognised as a community—not that we say this. We don’t rear our children to know these things; our children learn these things by viewing them, and they view them when they start school.
That happens from primary level even. The child is asked to draw themselves or draw their home and surroundings, and the majority of children are drawing houses and gardens, but the Travelling child, somehow or other, just can’t find it in themselves to put down where they come from and what they do, especially if they live in a caravan. This has been brought up several hundred times throughout the schools that I have been to. It has been recognised that the child feels discriminated against. The majority of discrimination or racism is what you feel, what the child feels. It’s not about what is really happening; it’s more about what the child feels. And we have to take on board our children’s feelings, don’t we? We have to get rid of the fears that they have. When it comes to cultural awareness in schools, for instance International Day, many children I know have come back home and said, “Rose”—or Auntie Rose or Mam—“there was nothing about us; there was nothing about our people.” And this is on International Day in schools; there is no celebration there.
Through time, things have changed and awareness has been brought into schools. There are very good examples. Children are coming out a lot more now. They are proud of who they are; they know who they are. They are looking through their history; interest is built there. That gives them an identity in school, because it’s written down, it’s in black and white, and they can see it. Like everything else, they can see it; they can learn about it. The other child is going to learn about them. Yes, I believe it is crucial for GRT History Month to be part of the curriculum.
There was one good example that we had just recently. We held an event in City Hall, and it was excellent. We had musicians; we had a celebration of GRT that day. We had many of the community: Roma, Gypsy, Irish, Scots, Welsh—all different Travellers coming together and celebrating that month. It was excellent. One teacher came from a school with four or five pupils, Travelling children—those who were settled and also those who lived in caravans. They are doing brilliantly in school, and I think this is because of the attitude of the teacher. She is a brilliant woman. Let’s put it this way: she is a caring person and she shows that, and she shows it also to the community. She welcomes the families, and everybody in her school seemingly is doing fine, including GRT children.
Chair: That is a very positive note on which to end our discussions today. We could have gone on for a long time. Apologies for having to cut the discussion short a little bit; we have run well over time. On behalf of the whole Committee, I thank all of you for your time this morning. This has been a robust and frank exchange of views. Thank you for that, and thank you for bringing your passion and your knowledge of this subject to the Committee today.