Category: ACERT

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.

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

A report written by Dr Graeme Atherton, Director of the National Education Opportunities Network (NEON) has found no significant increase in the progression of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities into Higher Education and makes recommendations how the situation might be improved. It was commissioned by the Sir John Cass Foundation focussing on groups of young
people who are under-represented in higher education.

1. Access to HE for GRT communities is not increasing
2. Less than 30% of Access and Participation Plans (APPs) mention GRT learners
3. Less than 5% of Access and Participation Plans (APPs) include reference to any activities to support access to HE for GRT learners
4. No APPs include targets related to access and participation in HE for GRT learners
5. Only 2 of 29 Uni-Connect partnerships are undertaking activities with GRT learners
6. Only 2 London HE providers indicate any work with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller learners in their APPs.

Recommendations

1. Ensure there is a specific strand of work focused on Gypsy, Roma and Traveller participation in Uni-Connect from 2021 to 2025
2. Ask all HE providers to outline how they are supporting access, participation for GRT learners in their annual APP statements to the Office for Students
3. Establish a national GRT HE access and participation initiative
4. Integrate focus on GRT community learners in the new national strategy to tackle Gypsy, Roma and Traveller inequalities
5. Mayor of London to establish a GRT education task force.