All Ireland Traveller Health Study Our Geels - Department of Health ...

All Ireland Traveller Health Study
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In Northern Ireland 42% of Travellers live in social housing, 21% live on serviced sites, 9% live in privately
rented housing, 6% live in privately owned housing, and 5% live in grouped accommodation. A further
5% live in cooperated sites, 5% in transit sites and 7% on unauthorised sites (Northern Ireland Housing
Executive, 2008).
Education and Literacy
Traveller organisations have for many years expressed concerns regarding Traveller education in terms
of equality of outcomes, data collection, and lack of interculturalism in the curriculum. The 1995
Task Force Report on the Travelling Community made 167 recommendations in the field of Traveller
education - more than half of the total number of recommendations in the report (Report of the Task
Force on the Travelling Community, 1995). This reflected the massive need for change in the provisions
that existed.
Traveller educational status has been recorded repeatedly as considerably lower than that of their
general peers, to an extent unmatched by any other community in Irish society. The 2006 census
(Central Statistics Office, 2007c) revealed that 63.2% of Traveller children under the age of 15 had left
school, compared to 13.3% nationally. Participation of Travellers in higher education was 0.8% (8 in
1,000). This compares to 30.2% (302 in a 1,000) of the national population. There are many possible
explanations for this continued inequity. Advocates argue that it is difficult for Travellers to see the
positive outcomes in staying on in mainstream education as many Travellers experience discrimination
in trying to obtain employment (Danaher et al., 2009).
There is a transgenerational issue, well established in the economics of education literature (Heckman,
1974; Harmon and Walker 1995). When parents have poor literacy, they then are not able to read or
interpret the child’s educational material or such literature as health instructions for taking medication.
School policy must meet the challenges of attendance at school and assessment of children’s skills
and abilities with allocation to the appropriate class situation. All too often in the past separate or even
segregated teaching of Traveller children occurred and assumptions about intellectual capability were
coloured by the child’s membership of the Traveller community. To address such factors the ‘Report
and Recommendations for a Traveller Education Strategy’ was published in 2006, and proposed a
5-year strategy to examine Traveller Education including education in preschool and the early years,
primary, post-primary, further and adult education and third-level education. The primary goal of the
strategy is to achieve equality for Travellers in education, in terms of access, participation and outcomes
(Department of Education, 2006).
The ‘Report and Recommendations for a Traveller Education Strategy’
• examines existing provisions and supports for Travellers in education at all levels from preschool to
higher education
• identifies objectives for Traveller education, sets out plans of action, with suggested time scales
• makes recommendations in relation to optimising or reallocating existing resources
• sets out expected outcomes
• addresses all aspects of Traveller education taking a holistic lifelong learning perspective from
preschool provision to adult and continuing education.