ACERT submission to Home Education inquiry

The Education Select Committee is conducting and inquiry into home education. The committee will examine how home-educated children are being supported in their learning and whether more needs to be done to ensure they are all receiving a high-quality education. It will also look at duties of local authorities, and the potential role for inspections in ensuring standards.

ACERT believes this is a key issue for many Gypsy, Roma and Traveller families, especially those with children in the secondary phase. We recognise that there are push and pull factors at work and that many parents withdraw their children from school because of a mismatch between their priorities and expectations and those of schools. Factors such as unaddressed racist bullying, accommodation and mobility issues can also play their part. Families need information and advice, access to alternative provision or vocational education.

The main points of ACERT’s submission are:

  • ACERT entirely supports the right of parents/guardians to home educate their children.
  • We also recognise a child’s right to an education which equips them to understand and participate in the wider community
  • Education can take many forms and need not be anything like standard school education, but there should be minimum standards in literacy, numeracy and IT literacy. There needs to be an assessment of whether parents can deliver these basic entitlements.
  • ACERT supports placing a duty upon local authorities to assure the quality of home education and that adequate safeguarding occurs
  • Local authorities need to maintain a register of home-educated children which should record ethnic codes, last school attended, any special needs and details of the education being provided.
  • A portion of the funding that would have been allocated to the school for the education of a child should instead be allocated to the local authority registering and supporting their home education.

The Committee invited written submissions addressing any or all of the following points:

  • The duties of local authorities with regards to home education, including safeguarding and assuring the quality of home education;
  • whether a statutory register of home-educated children is required;
  • the benefits children gain from home education, and the potential disadvantages they may face;
  • the quality and accessibility of support (including financial support) available for home educators and their children, including those with special educational needs, disabilities, mental health issues, or caring responsibilities, and those making the transition to further and higher education;
  • whether the current regulatory framework is sufficient to ensure that the wellbeing and academic achievement of home educated children is safeguarded, including where they may attend unregistered schools, have been formally excluded from school, or have been subject to ‘off-rolling’;
  • the role that inspection should play in future regulation of home education;
  • what improvements have been made to support home educators since the 2010-15 Education Committee published their report on ‘Support for Home Education’ in 2012; and
  • the impact COVID-19 has had on home educated children, and what additional measures might need to be taken in order to mitigate any negative impacts.’

The consultation closed on November 6th 2020.

Higher Education Pledge to support inclusion

An important initiative to encourage universities and colleges to make a firm commitment to series of practical steps to encourage and support Gypsies, Travellers, Roma, Showmen & Boaters (GTRSB) into Higher Education.

Your institution must commit to working towards creating the most appropriate and welcoming environment and conditions in which GTRSB students can stay resilient and thrive academically and personally. 

Higher Education Pledge

Colleges signing the pledge agree to:

  1. a named contact point for GTRSB students and potential students 
  2. data monitoring of GTRSB student and staff numbers;
  3. building a supportive and welcoming culture for GTRSB students;
  4. outreach and engagement to local GTRSB communities and
  5. inclusion, celebration and commemoration of GTRSB cultures and communities.

The pledge has been developed in consultation with community members (graduates, students and academic staff) and is underpinned by key research findings and conclusions of successful widening participation initiatives.

Priti hateful

The Home Office’s work in this particular area actually refers to some of the criminality that takes place and that has happened through Traveller communities and unauthorised encampments. 

Now that’s very different to Gypsy and Roma communities. The two are absolutely separate.

But basically we saw a police officer that was ‘effectively murdered’ through a robbery that took place by a Traveller family.

Priti Patel in conversation with Gillian Merron

Priti Patel made these comments (and other) in an online ‘Conversation with the Home Secretary‘ event hosted by the Board of Deputies of British Jews. Chief Executive Gillian Merron referred to the Home Office consultation launched last year on whether to make “unauthorised encampments” a criminal offence.

She rehearsed the familiar tropes, that Gypsies and Roma are traditional and respectable, and that Travellers, who live on unauthorised sites are essentially criminal. The racist generalisations and stereotypes will be all too familiar to ACERT members but profoundly depressing coming from a cabinet responsibility for this area. She also appears to have her facts wrong.

We believe that she is refering death of police officer Andrew Harper, 28, in August last year for which Jessie Cole, Albert Bowers and Henry Long were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to 42 years in July this year. All three have lodged appeals against their sentences, with Bowers and Cole also seeking to appeal their convictions

The Travellers Times reports that none of the three men are Irish Travellers or have connections to “unauthorised sites”. Long was arrested on an authorised Berkshire site where English Romanies and Irish Travellers live alongside each other. They also do not appear to be “a family”.

Pauline Anderson, chair of The Traveller Movement has written an open letter calling for an apology

We consider your comments during this meeting to constitute hate speech as it brands an entire ethnic group as criminal and violent.

You have a duty as a public figure to eliminate unlawful discrimination, advance equality of opportunity and encourage good relations between all groups. Your comments not only pit ethnic groups against one another, they also single out an entire ethnic group as criminal and violent.

The Traveller Movement Open letter to Priti Patel

The questions about Gypsies, Roma and Travellers come at 34:53.

Pavees and COVID-19: An Education Policy Analysis

Chelsea McDonagh is the Education Policy and Campaigns officer at the Traveller Movement and is a member of the ACERT Executive Committee. She is an Irish Traveller from London and Master’s student at King’s College London. She will present the findings of her research to the 2020 ACERT AGM

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed the world and, in the process, has had devastating effects on the most vulnerable people, none more so than Pavee (Irish Traveller) children who are being failed by state policy once again. There is much research exploring the less positive outcomes of Pavee children and young people in education but what is much less explored is the state of education policy addressing the needs of Pavee students, an alarming omission when considering the impact that policy has on the lives and educational experiences of students. This research explores the policy silence phenomena in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and contextualises it in the historic policy arrangements surrounding Pavee people.