Educational Technology: Gypsy/Roma/Traveller

I wrote a while ago that in some local authority areas, the majority of known parents whose children are not in school are from the Gypsy/Roma/Traveller community. Those who have been following the series on Channel 4 at 8 o'clock on Tuesdays will have been horrified to see examples of the attitude towards girls. The programme is called Big Fat Gypsy Weddings. There have been several casual asides which left me absolutely breathless. For example, the presenter mentioned in passing that Gypsy girls usually leave school at eleven. We are not talking here about travelling communities who are moving about in caravans, but families living in houses in West London. Tonight's programme details the view in this community that literacy and education are not really important for girls. It shows a thirteen year old girl who is leaving school in order to do housework.

That in this day and age it is possible to take children from school in this way and make no provision for their education is shocking. I say nothing of the sight last week of a six year-old girl getting a spray tan and then dressing in a mini skirt and boob tube. I can already hear the cries of 'cultural sensitivity'. Working as I do in Hackney, I am familiar with this excuse for turning a blind eye to cruelty and neglect. I have observed that 'cultural sensitivity' always seems to entail ignoring the mistreatment of females. Eleven year old girls being denied an education in the Gypsy community, female genital mutilation among those of African heritage, forced marriage of Pakistani girls, wife-beating by Muslims.

I recommend all readers to watch the programme tonight and judge for themselves whether the thirteen year-old girl featured is happy to have her schooling stopped and whether or not she is likely to receive an education at home. That a blind eye is being turned towards this is scandalous and I have already made a few complaints to the relevant local authorities, asking what on earth is wrong with them that they are tolerating this sort of thing. Home education is one thing; taking a child from school to keep house is something else entirely. I now await the agonised hand-wringing and protestations of the middle class, white liberals who object to anybody asking any questions about any child taken from school.

There seems little doubt that the number of children in the United Kingdom being educated by their parents is growing. Since nobody knows how many there actually are of course, it is impossible to say what the rate of growth is. It is probably not as fast as some have suggested. In a book last year, for instance, Mike Fortune-Wood claimed that something over eighty thousand children in this country were being electively home educated. In a post on his list HE-UK yesterday, the number seems to have grown to over a hundred thousand!

The really steep increase in numbers of such children began some time in the 1990s. The Internet probably played a role in this, as parents could now be in touch instantly with others who could counsel and advice them. Information on court cases and the relevant legislation also became available at the click of a mouse. We all have a tendency to project our own character upon other people. So if we withdrew our children from school because we felt that it was not right for them and we are genuinely providing them with an education, we tend naturally to assume that others who de-register their children or don't send them to school in the first place are working from a perspective similar to our own. This can be a mistake.

Much of the current alarm over home education and calls for something to be done about it have been precipitated not by the sort of home educating parent one sees on Internet lists or meets at groups. It has rather been precipitated by concern about children in the Gypsy/Roma/Traveller 'community'. In late 2005, the Department for Education and Skills commissioned Arthur Ivatts to look into the situation with children in this community who were not attending school. The following year, he produced his report. It was called Elective Home Education: the situation regarding current policy, provision and practice in Elective Home Education for Gypsy, Roma and traveller Children (DfES Research Report RW77). His conclusions can be briefly summed as as follows. First, a large and increasing number of these children were not being sent to school on the grounds that their parents were educating them. Secondly, their parents were not really able to do so and the whole thing was a scam, designed to allow the parents not to bother with their children's education. Thirdly, the law needed to be tightened up to put a stop to this practice.

Home educating parents often seem unsure what has been driving the calls for change in legislation. It really began in earnest with Ivatts' report. In some local authorities, over half the children known to the authority who are supposedly being home educated belong to this group. It will be remembered that one criticism of the York Consulting research was that they had chosen nine local authorities with a disproportionate number of travellers. In fact, many local authorities now believe that this might be the single largest group of home educated children. In other words, the rise in numbers of home educated children might be caused not by the sort of parent who belongs to Education Otherwise, or who posts on HE-UK, but by Gypsies and Travellers who do not want their children to attend school.

The interesting thing about this is that it is seldom discussed openly. This is probably because people are nervous of being accused of racism and bend over backwards to be culturally sensitive. If the girls in this community stop education at primary age and help their mothers round the camp, well that's their custom. Who is to say that this is any the less of an education than that in schools?

Taking action against the Gypsy/Roma/Traveller community about whether their kids are in school or not is frankly impossible. However, the inability to tackle this issue in that particular community will have a knock-on effect on those who do not live in caravans. If a moral panic about elective home education sweeps through local authorities and they feel that they must do something about it on their patch, then most of the EWOs will not be wishing to trudge down to the nearest camp and confront a crowd of angry Gypsies. Far easier and more enjoyable to turn up on the doorstep of a single mother who might be more likely to listen to reason. Much of the present atmosphere about home education began with the Ivatts report. It is certainly worth reading if one wants to know the background to the current debate on the subject.