To think amount of Roma and Traveller children withdrawn from school underage needs to be cracked down on?

[Jane379]

Two things have made me think about this.

One was the recent thread on Venezuela Fury, Tyson's daughter. Her situation appears slightly different as apparently she did receive tuition online but it made me look into the wider situation.

I know there has been improvement, and that many Roma & travellers families don't do this. But it shouldn't be allowed in the first place. Yes, some who do may homeschool their kids properly, but how many?

There needs to be more regulation of homeschooling.

Why do Roma & traveller kids often slip through the net? Is it sometimes linked to families moving around so children move from one LA to another?

There' nothing wrong with kids preferring to pursue technical options than academic, or living the travelling lifestyle. But school would give them a chance to choose.

But some don’t provide one. An ex colleague home schooled her daughter, said daughter was home alone everyday from eleven, no online school, just making tiktoks all day. She’s now 16, no qualifications, no job ans barely literate. She hasn’t received any education since she was ten years old. Our sons older two birth siblings as eight year olds had never set foot in a school, couldn’t read, write, count, name colours.

Yes I totally agree but not only that, people who run stalls at County fairs and agricultural shows and stuff, can't remember what they call themselves but it's not the same. Their children do not need to go and work during school hours they should make suitable career choices like the rest of us.

That is disgraceful then- and must change

Culture innit.

And what about all the kids here that miss school for holidays, or because the parents can’t be bothered to get them there and so label them as school avoidant?

Those that do are a minority

What makes you think they are checked up on any more than travellers?

If you wanted to do that then you would have to make Home Ed illegal for all otherwise it's discrimination.

Schools pick up on danger signs, report it and nothing is done.

Source: I reported a (non-traveller) boy exhibiting dangerous signs. Reported it. Was mocked.

3 yrs later, he carried out a serious offence. He was still only a teenager.

There is no legal definition of full time education though.
I went to college with two traveller girls, they and a lot of their friends did have tutors sporadically for English and Maths.

That's terrible. I understand you are in Scotland? But I imagine similar things occur in England.

I agree and it's heartbreaking these children are not given many opportunities and are just expected to carry on with age old traditions which don't work so well these days.

We have a touring caravan and there are often traveller families on some of the sites we frequent. The children are just doing their own thing all day long. I got talking to some last year, they were around 8-10 years old and sadly it was apparent as soon as they started talking just how behind (educationally wise) they were, especially the young girls.

Well there should be!

Yes, I am.

After that one, I became much more blunt in my reports. I once wrote "In my opinion, this boy is a future sex offender." And Ed Psychologist told me that I shouldn't/could write that...

@Joolay I think these situations can be different.

Where I live there are “show people”, as they’re known. They are permanently based in the area, live in a fixed site, and run fairgrounds. Most of the year they just do small local fairs, but in the summer they have to go away quite a lot. My kids went to school with some of the show kids. They were bright kids who studied hard, but had no choice but to go away a lot in the summer term, because their parents went. They took work with them.

I believe they’re not subject to the same rules about term time absence. I know the primary school certainly facilitated sending them school work and supporting the parents, because I remember hearing one of the parents talking in the school office.

I know 2 families who “home educate” and both spend a lot of time “on holiday” aka “educational trips” and just days out and stuff and I think the whole home education system needs better regulation as a whole issue - not just to specific demographs eg travellers/ international families etc etc

I feel there should be some sort of regular mandatory check in with someone to ensure vital stuff is being covered and that all is well as things like abuse/DV/ are easily covered with this. Nobody is accountable to anyone!

10% of traveller children are dead before their second birthday. Yes, really.

I don’t think it would work in practice.
A child who is being educated at home on a one to one basis doesn’t need as many hours of education as a child in a class of 30.

This is the problem. Only in the U.K. I bet. This is why there are so many people wanting to live here. It is all down the gutters now.

I can't speak for the rest of the UK, but there are very few checks on home schooling in Scotland. My impression is that schools are often quite pleased to have Traveller children removed from their roll.

So far as Roma children are concerned, we had one family (at my old school) which pretended to want to enrol their children, in order to keep the authorities happy. (They'd just arrived from Germany.)

Other Roma families did send both boys and girls to school, but had a tendency to keep girls off in order to use them for babysitting or begging. I can recall one exception, a family with a father who was keen for his daughter to go to university.

Ironically when a group of Travellers want to settle on land and live there permanently (so children can attend school) all the local nimbys come along and go "nooooo.....not here".
I vaguely remember there was documentary on TV about a site in Essex (I think) that when the travellers did leave the local village primary ended up having to close because 95% of the pupils were Traveller.
The nimbys then moaned about their school closing 🤔

Came on here to add exactly this. The UK needs to get a grip pandering to everyone‘s religious beliefs over adherence to UK laws and British customs. I’d happily see the back of halal meat as the common denominator- it’s cruel beyond belief. If you can’t eat any other meat bring your own or pick the vegetarian option - it’s not hard.

Back to the thread: those kids disappear from sight and we all know that many female travellers children are highly vulnerable and lack education to support themselves if for whatever reason they lose their status in their community.

I think there should be far tighter regulations surrounding home education for all children. It is absolute madness that parents are allowed to opt out of traditional schooling without regular rigorous checks that the children are receiving a good education.

I am old enough to remember when parents refused to let their daughters take the 11plus as' it was a waste of time for a girl' They preferred girls to;learn only cooking and sewing. And these were ordinary working class people, not travellers. The 'it's not for the likes of us' attitude still prevails in some cases

All what kids? Stop talking out of your arse.