Common Ground

Northern Irish plan to improve Traveller children’s school outcomes ‘isn’t working’

Strategy that came into effect more than a decade ago is failing, says joint chairman of group behind it

Amy Ward of the Irish Traveller Movement: 'My sister was beaten up. Less so because she was a Taig [Catholic] than because she was a Traveller'
Amy Ward of the Irish Traveller Movement: 'My sister was beaten up. Less so because she was a Taig [Catholic] than because she was a Traveller'
Luke Butterly
Sun May 12 2024 - 08:00

Nearly three-quarters of Irish Traveller children are still leaving school in Northern Ireland with fewer than five GCSE pass grades – a decade after a Stormont strategy to improve education levels began.

The strategy, launched by Stormont’s Department of Education in November 2013, aimed to see Traveller children obtain similar standards to their settled counterparts within a decade, but most are still leaving with either poor grades, or no qualifications at all.

Between 2003 and 2012, about 8.5 per cent of Traveller children left school in the North with at least five GCSEs at grades A*-C, while 63 per cent left with no qualifications at all.

Between 2013 and 2022, the number leaving with at least five GCSE passes rose to around 25 per cent. During that period, however, nearly a third gained fewer than five GCSEs, and 42 per cent obtained no qualifications at all.

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“It shows you that the strategy isn’t working, or hasn’t worked,” said Dr Robbie McVeigh, co-chairman of the taskforce that drew up the strategy.

Travellers should be consulted with more to find out “why the system isn’t working for them”, he said.

The strategy followed on from a Department of Education report in 2011 that found there had been a “collective failure” over many decades to address educational underachievement among Travellers.

Given problems with attendance, grades and “the very high proportion of Traveller children identified as having ‘special needs”, it was clear that Traveller children are “profoundly disadvantaged”, it said.

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Mothers of Traveller pupils told the Belfast-based investigative website The Detail that they are left without proper supports, complaining that too often Traveller children are wrongly seen as “too disruptive”, and left to play with computers on their own.

“The child is loving it – like, ‘Oh, I’m having fun here’ – not realising they are getting robbed of their education,” said one mother, Mary-Patricia McGeough, from Armagh.

Nearly half of Traveller children have special needs, compared with 19 per cent of children in the wider population. Such children are treated differently, Ms McGeough said.

“They dismiss the Traveller child and push them to one side. This has happened for a long time, even from my childhood,” she said.

The 2013 strategy did improve attendance rates for Traveller children, bringing them from 68 per cent in 2011-2012 to 73.7 per cent in 2019-2020. However, the rates fell again to 68 per cent in 2020/21 and have remained the same since.

Most Traveller children do not finish compulsory education. In 2010-2011, 86 Traveller children were enrolled in Year 1 but by 2021-2022, only 37 were enrolled in Year 12, the final year of secondary school.

“The fluid nature of Traveller attendance makes it challenging to track pupils across years using the school census,” said the Department of Education, saying that it does not track individual pupils.

Separately, half of all Traveller children in schools in Northern Ireland said they had been bullied, according to a Queen’s University Belfast study, which leads to many of them quitting school.

Traveller campaigner Amy Ward, who works for the Irish Traveller Movement in Dublin, remember that her experience in Northern Irish schools before her family moved to England “were pretty awful”.

“My sister was beaten up. Less so because she was a Taig [Catholic] than because she was a Traveller. Quite badly at times. People were overt about it,” she said. “My sister was called a knacker by the teacher in front of the class. That still happens, by the way.”