ACERT – Page 12 – Advisory Council for the Education of Romany and other Travellers

Most excluded minorities

GRT Access to Education HEPI Report 151 Download

The Think Tank Higher Education Policy Institute, has published a new report on access to education among Gypsies, Roma and Travellers (Gypsy, Roma and Traveller) authored by Policy Manager Dr.Laura Bressington.

Laura will join our next Education Support Network meeting on Wednesday, 30th November at 2pm online.

Gypsies, Roma and Travellers: The ethnic minorities most excluded from UK education is an informative report that looks carefully at definitions and draws attention to the dangers of homogenisation – focussing sharply on the need for careful data collection and handling. In her own use of data she demonstrates that these communities are hugely underrepresented in Higher Education.

Evidence

Gypsy, Roma and Travellers of Irish heritage have the widest attainment gap in measures of pupils achieving a good level of development in early years education;
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils have some of the lowest rates of attendance and the highest rates of permanent exclusion from schools;
in 2020/21, 9.1% of Gypsy / Roma pupils and 21.1% of Irish Traveller pupils achieved a grade 5 or above in GCSE English and Mathematics, compared to a national average in England of 51.9%;
young people from Gypsy / Roma and Irish Traveller communities are the least likely ethnic groupings to enter higher education by the age of 19 – just 6.3% of Gypsy / Roma and 3.8% of Irish Travellers access higher education by the age of 19 compared to around 40% of all young people;
Gypsy and Irish Travellers are the UK’s ‘least liked’ group, with 44.6% of people holding negative views against them – 18.7 percentage points higher than Muslims; and
Irish Travellers face a ‘mental health crisis’, with one-in-10 deaths caused by suicide.

Recommendations

For Government

Improved Data Collection. The current lack of information means that the full scale of the problem remains invisible.
Funding. The small scale project local project funding available at the time of writing is inadequate to the scale of the problem which is a national one.

For Higher Education

Access and Participation Plans such as the Higher Education Pledge which create a welcoming environment are to be welcomed
There is a need to include the history and culture of the various Travelling groups in the curriculum. Including works by members of the communities and including relevant data can improve understanding of the different Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities

ACERT Showmen’s Working Group

Media Release (23/05/22)

The ACERT Showmen’s Working Group is a newly formed network of community members, researchers and educators, dedicated to advancing educational opportunities for Showmen throughout the UK and Ireland. Inclusive of all persons who identify as “Showman”, “Show-woman” or “Show person”, regardless of business practice, independent of the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain or heritage.

ACERT’s charitable objectives are: 1) advance the education and the protection and preservation of the health of travellers; (2) promote good community relations by a) endeavouring to eliminate discrimination against travellers on racial or other grounds; b) encourage equal opportunity between travellers and other groups in a multi-cultural society.

The ACERT Showmen’s Working Group have chosen to uphold these charitable objectives, in additional to the following aims: 1) to establish network which can act as a collective voice with regards to improving educational practice and outcomes for Showmen; 2) to provide an additional platform which will allow Showmen to be included in consultations with the department of education or UK parliament; 3) to highlight and promote educational projects designed for Showmen; 4) to expand our individual resources by creating a shared archive and CRM; 5) to create a space in which we can provide mutual peer support; 6) to champion our individual identity, whilst working within the broader GTRSB collective; and 7) to generate/publish and publicise accurate, reliable information about Showmen’s education within the collective.

The current members of the ACERT Showmen’s Working Group: Candace Thomas (ACERT Vice Chair), Colin Clarke (ACERT executive committee), Valdemar Kalinin (ACERT executive committee), Siobhan Spencer (ACERT executive committee), Mitch Miller (Fair Scotland), Natalie Cowie-Kayes (Fair Scotland), Joannie Peak (Future 4 Fairgrounds), Colleen Roper (Future 4 Fairgrounds), Tyler Hatwell (Traveller Pride), Sheldon Chadwick (Showmen’s Mental Health Awareness), Kath Cresswell (Teacher), and Samantha Heeson (Showmen’s Guild member).

The ACERT Showmen’s Working Group meet via zoom on a regular basis (approx. every 6 weeks) and have a rotating chair, which allows for collective responsibility and ensures an equitable environment for all members. If you are involved in education, are a showmen or parent looking to join our group please contact: candace.thomas@acert.org.uk

Liverpool Conference reorganised

We are pleased to announce that we have at last been able to secure a new date for the ACERT annual conference previously scheduled for September 16th 2022.

Add to Calendar

Storytelling, Education & Wellbeing

Friday, 3 February 2023
10:00 – 16:00

John Lennon Art and Design Building (JLADB Space),
Duckinfield Street,
Liverpool, L3 5RD

We will circulate the programme and booking details shortly but we hope you will save the date today.

Dinner table prejudice

A far ranging survey of attitudes to Muslims and Islam also revealed the extent of prejudice towards Gypsies and Irish Travellers.

This report is based on a survey conducted by YouGov using an online interview with members of YouGov’s participant panel. In total, 1667 people completed the survey and prior to analysis, the sample was weighted by age, political measures, gender, social grade, region and level of education to ensure representativeness.

Gypsy and Irish Travellers are viewed more negatively by the British public, with 44.6% of people viewing this group negatively. Muslims are the UK’s second ‘least liked’ group, 25.9% of the British public feel negative towards Muslims.

Higher social classes exhibit more negative attitudes

Younger people, women, non-believers, Labour voters and Remainers tended to have less negative attitudes to ethnic and religious groups than older people, men, Conservative voters and leavers. For ethnic groups, apart from Gypsies and Irish Travellers, higher social groups tended to express more tolerance than manual categories. The report offers various possible explanations for this exception.

The one group that stands out in our survey is Gypsy and Irish Travellers. This group, unlike all the others, is viewed significantly more negatively by higher social grades. 48.4% of ABC1s view Gypsy and Irish Travellers negatively, compared with 39.3% of C2DEs. As we have already observed, there is insufficient data in our survey on Gypsy and Irish Travellers to explain the reasons behind this. One possibility is that in cases where social sanction against a group-based prejudice is lacking, people from higher social grades are happy to acknowledge their dislike. Another is that dislike of Gypsy and Irish Traveller populations is greater among rural and suburban populations – where affluent ABC1s and Gypsy and Irish Traveller sites tend to be located – rather than in inner-cities. Perhaps the most compelling suggestion is that there is a class element to anti-Gypsy and Irish Traveller prejudice, meaning it is more common among middle classes. These are all speculations, however, and require much more research to substantiate.

From ACERT’s point of view this makes depressing though not entirely surprising reading. What is encouraging however is that the researchers have not brushed the findings under the carpet on the grounds that they are not a religious group, but have made a strong call for further research.

The surprising – and in places, highly concerning – results show that it is not Muslims who are the ‘least liked’ group in Britain but Gypsy and Irish Travellers, who stand out by an almost 20% margin.54 44.6% of respondents acknowledged negative attitudes towards this group, followed by Muslims (25.9%) and then Pakistanis (14.5%). This was the only question in this survey that asked about Gypsy and Irish Travellers. While we analyse this question in more depth later in this report, what is clear from this vast difference is there is a significant need for further investigation into public views about discrimination against Travellers.