Former HM national Inspector for Roma and Traveller Education and British education expert Arthur Ivatts examines the miseducation of Roma children and shatters many of the education and cultural myths about Roma communities.
For hundreds of thousands of European children, the future is bleak and almost hopeless. These are the children belonging to the Roma, Gypsy and Traveller (RGT) communities. These European citizens number between twelve and fifteen million which makes them Europe’s largest minority ethnic group. And yet their mistreatment by governments and majority populations over five or more centuries seems to have no end.
For anyone reading this and musing on its seeming dramatic corruption of our proud and noble European history, they should read the thousands of specialised history books written by many scholars since the middle of the nineteenth century. They will then be left in no doubt as to what has shamefully happened to these people.
As for the situation of these communities today, they need only also to search the internet for reports on the circumstances of Roma, Gypsies and Travellers, to realise that there has been the destruction of many forests over the last thirty years by a host of international organisations whose names are common household terms. The hundreds of voluminous tomes resulting reflect on and detail the tragic and on-going state of affairs in terms of the damaging impact of the social exclusion and marginalisation of these vulnerable human beings. In this rich information and audit context, clearly governments cannot claim that they do not know the reality of the situation for these particular citizens.
The gross social exclusion of a majority of these communities manifests itself most starkly in terms of education. The international evidence, from whatever source happens to be consulted, will confirm that a majority of the children and young people in these minority communities have very unequal educational opportunities compared with most European children and very poor life and employment chances as a result.
Access to quality education is frequently denied for a host of reasons and circumstances beyond the control of the families themselves. Even if access is secured, many such children experience demeaning and humiliating school and learning environments characterised by segregation, being erroneously placed in a special school, being routinely subject to racist bullying, to the stigmatisation of their mother tongue and given curricular offerings that are totally non-affirmative of their identity and self-worth. Is it small wonder that dropout rates are so tragically high?
There is perhaps a deeper and more profound sadness to this reality for such a huge cohort of children and young people. Not only are lives and life-chances irrevocably damaged by these experiences but it goes hand in hand with also receiving a constant barrage of accusations that they themselves are responsible for their own future’s demise.
Governments with a long history of abuse of particular minority communities are always faced eventually with having to pick up the pieces. It is so politically easy in these circumstances for administrations to wash their hands by blaming the victims. How so sick and tired we are of hearing politicians and the media accusing the victims of self-harm with such phases as, ‘They are not interested in education;’ ‘They lack motivation to attend school’ and then the convenient get-out clause, ‘They don’t speak the language – what do you expect us to do?’
But just to confirm their innocence and moral blamelessness, governments and the media pour on further abuse for good measure with snide references to: an unwillingness to integrate, profligate procreation, laziness, dirt and criminality. Any analysis on state racism seems to be conveniently forgotten!
But let us not dwell any longer on this disturbing prognosis. You know, the sun could be shining! Over the last forty years teams of skilled professionals have been working away in the United Kingdom (UK) to develop a model of best practice in the education of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller children and young people.
It has been achieved with cunning and skilled determination, professional commitment and robust advocacy. Neutral government funding has been targeted to find the resources for the establishment in every local authority/municipality of a dedicated Roma, Gypsy and Traveller specialist education support service. These teams of teachers, assistants, welfare and medical support personnel, have identified and tackled all the hindrances to securing the acceptance of the children in the schools, unhindered access, regular attendance, and satisfactory levels of attainment.
These positive actions have also involved outreach work with communities to build trusting relationships with the children and their parents. The main focus of the work has been on linking together the often shy hands of the marginalised families to the frequently reluctant hands of the schools.
In addition, these specialised services have also provided extensive programmes of professional in-service training at a local and national level and the production of a multitude of culturally relevant books and other learning resources.
All of these professionally courageous and innovative actions have had a dramatic impact of the educational fortunes of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller communities in the UK. Acceptance, access, regular attendance and satisfactory levels of learning progress have all been achieved for over 90% of the primary school age cohort.
The work on secondary education has also benefitted from these pioneering achievements although a smaller proportion of the secondary age cohort has a satisfactory staying on rate and levels of attainment.
Many non-UK European professional educationalists, who have become interested and or engaged with the work of the RGT Support Services, have concurred with the assessment that the policy, provision and practice in the UK represents a model of European best practice. The investment of over 700 million pounds over the last 40 years has provided very good value of money. There can be no doubt in terms of the UK’s experience that it is no easy, quick or cheap task to repair the grave damage to vulnerable communities of five centuries of official and public abuse.
You know, the sun is shining! The sun is shining because we know what to do to resolve these difficulties across Europe and beyond. There is really no need for European politicians to keep throwing up their arms in the air with acclimations like, ‘What can we do with the Roma?’ or ‘Hitler did not kill enough’. Universal access to quality inclusive and intercultural education with all other children and young people is the irrefutable and obvious answer.
And with the UK and other notable examples from across much of Europe, we have the successful and practical experience of knowing how to achieve this urgently needed outcome in the interests of equality and the protection of human rights.
Knowing what to do does not mean to say that there is a nice short and cheap agenda. Unfortunately, the agendas for the required actions are long and frequently problematic. Perhaps it is useful to spell out a little the agendas attached to the four ‘As’.
The institutional ‘Acceptance’ of these children into mainstream integrated schools with dignity and respect will require many initiatives by central and local government to ensure that all the staff of schools (and future teacher trainees) receive quality and informed in-service training focussed on race equality and social justice in addition to a fuller understanding of the history, culture and languages of these specific minority ethnic communities.
The civil service staff of ministries of education and local authority’s/municipality’s educational administrations also need mandatory in-service training on the same lines. Schools and their administrative authorities, including governing bodies, must be statutorily vested with the duty and responsibility to promote community cohesion within their local area and ensure that the attitudes and behaviour of both majority and minority non-Roma, Gypsy and Traveller pupils and parents comply at all times with equality and anti-bias legislation. No blind eyes should be turned if the confidence in education of these beleaguered and vulnerable communities is to grow and strengthen.
Equal ‘Access’ to educational opportunities demands the confidence of parents and their children to seek admission and attend local mainstream schools without the treat of unlawful rejection, hostility from other parents and their children, biased testing procedures or other corrupt administrative obstacles. Local authority/municipality and school admissions staff need to be included within the in-service training programmes referred to above.
Access must also include a positive and affirmative feeling by children in relation to learning environments. These should reflect the cultures and backgrounds of all the pupils in the school. It is also crucially important for Roma, Gypsy and Traveller children to be assured of access to the full curriculum irrespective of whether their mother tongue is the language of instruction or not.
Good schools and good teachers will accept a child’s linguistic skills as a bonus and if their mother tongue is different, to facilitate a rapid learning of the main classroom learning language. To make learning conditional on the child independently having the language of instruction is in total negation of good professional practice.
All children need good routines of school attendance if they are to make satisfactory progress and good levels of attainment. Experience suggests that there are a wide range of responsible actions that can and be taken to ensure regular school attendance. All the militating factors need to be identified and analysed so that informed policy responses may be put in place.
The RGT Education Support Services in the UK have provided support for school attendance to families who have struggled with poor child health problems, with poverty and a lack of school clothes, books and ‘dinner money’, and also, with home-to-school transport.
Improving pupil progress and raising attainment have longer and more complicated agendas. This is not to say that it is not possible. Quite the contrary! Happy and successful Roma, Gypsy and Traveller learners, like all children everywhere, are children who are given confidence, respect and encouragement by their teachers; who recognise and feel inclusive classroom environments; who surprise themselves in meeting the high but realistic expectations of teachers who exercise sound and just practice in individual pupil assessment; who see themselves and their culture and language reflected and celebrated in the books and learning materials around them and also in the formal curriculum, which affirms their identity; who feel liked, valued and included; who do not feel the fear of racist bullying; and who are given equal opportunities to delight in being placed in charge of their own exciting and successful learning.
Perhaps, many readers of this article, and perhaps sadly many teachers among them, will just say, ‘Well that is what it is like in our school but if the ‘Roma,’ ‘Gypsies,’ or ‘Travellers’ came, they would not fit in, they would be misbehaved, they would not attend, drop out early and they would not be able to learn in the same way as other children.’
These racist stereotypes are all too commonly heard but they are a long way from the truth. In a study conducted in the UK by the Roma Education Fund and Equality, it was found that Roma children who had been abused in Slovakia and the Czech Republic by being placed in special/practical schools, started to shine in every way, including intellectually and creatively, when placed in quality mainstream integrated primary and secondary schools in the UK.
All the children learnt fluent English within weeks of admission and the schools expressed sheer delight in having the children on roll. One primary head teacher said, ‘Their learning ability is outstanding and they are so eager to learn and do well. They are the best behaved pupils in the school and one ten year old Roma boy has recently been elected to become ‘head-boy.’ Further work done in Manchester schools has also found the same reality.
So the sun is shining in many schools in the UK and also in many other parts of Europe, where inclusive education has been fully embraced and many Roma, Gypsy and Traveller children have benefitted from the experience and long engagement with quality education.
So we all know what is needed but that old enemy of racial hatred seems to seep so often into the situation to undermine progress. The seeming lack of the sort of progress that is urgently needed would appear to make a mockery of the many laudable pronouncements including the Council of Europe’s Strasbourg Declaration, the EU’s ‘Race Directive’ and the call for ‘National Roma Integration Strategies.’
But we must remain optimistic and continue to spread the word that what all children need is inclusive school environments rich in educational professionalism and the spirit of humanity. Then the sun will be shining for all children.
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