To think amount of Roma and Traveller children withdrawn from school underage needs to be cracked down on?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

Yeah, again I agree with plenty here. DV rates are higher. Non traveller women are seen as an option for premarital sex where traveller women aren't. It's still an outrageous stretch from the accurate perception that non traveller women are more likely to have sex before marriage to the idea that being a traveller might make you more likely to be a rapist.

DV rates are higher. I think for all our differences of opinion we both care about that. The answer is most definitely not to take against the entire culture and community, claim that all the men are abusive and all the women are uneducated baby factories (in the words of others here, not you).

Traveller kids have lower literacy and lower life expectancy. Another issue I think we both care about. Again, if we blame travellers and their culture, they'll rightly close ranks and those kids will have less chance to get the education, vaccines, health care etc that will give them an equal chance.

Anti traveller racism will only make the problems within the traveller community worse. There are ways to support traveller education and health care, but they absolutely have to respect their culture and values and community. Otherwise it's a non-starter, and in my view for good reason.

Re forbidden things, how do you prevent your kids knowing about these things? I assume they are not allowed phones which I'd agree with.

What about friends though? Are they only allowed to be friends with other Roma kids?

they absolutely have to respect their culture and values and community.

• can you elaborate on this? I'm certainly not against travelling, speaking a different language, observing purity rules re toilets etc

You’ve conflated two issues @Jane379. Traveller education and home education.
Two separate issues. Your main interest is obviously the first so it’s completely inappropriate imho to be talking about legislation to do with the second in the same sentence. (Because travellers don’t take their children out of school for the reasons home educating families do. And the two communities almost never overlap)

the accurate perception that non traveller women are more likely to have sex before marriage

• in some cases it doesn't just seem to be this though, it seems to be a perception that non traveller women are sexually immoral. And why say premarital sex is OK for traveller men but not traveller women? If it's bad for one it's bad for the other, surely?

I have met and worked with a lot of travelling communities and I can hand on heart say I’ve never met one that I did not like.
All of them have been respectful, kind and hard working.

The only negatives I see is through the media and I am sure there are plenty of idiots, just like in any community but I only judge people by my own experiences of then.

Many have older fashioned views which I disagree with but a lot of people in this country agree with them.

I am not a big fan of homeschooling personally, although I can see why it does have benefits but I am pleased to see how many of the travelling community have started valuing education more.

don't look at Carrie Johnson or Nigella Lawson and see that they were kept safe by their culture or their education.

• how is Carrie Johnson an abused wife? She chose to marry Boris. Nigella, yes.

I’ve worked in the past with the large Irish traveller community in my area. The level of literacy for the adults was generally very low. The men worked cash in hand for tree felling, ground works and jet washing along with rubbish clearance. The women kept home.

i found a lot of the adult women funny and charming, but like their husbands most had very childish personalities, as if their emotional growth had stopped at around 14 years.

Can't you see that education makes it somewhat less likely though? If someone's illiterate, to go for an extreme example, that would make it harder to get help in DV situations.

That is interesting- and sad. I suppose if you're somewhat isolated in a very tight community that might be an effect sometimes.

I don't think pp was criticising childbearing, just very early childbearing.

I mean tolerate things that you might dislike or even completely oppose, and work with a community whose values and behaviours might at times seem completely opposed to your own, to make progress on the common cause.

So, let's say DV is the issue. You might well need to tolerate violence between men, even if you see it as inextricably connected to violence against women. Because "regime change" doesn't work and is immoral. Change has to happen on the terms and timescales of the comments itself.

Low literacy is the issue? Find out what would help the actual children themselves, and do that - online classes three hours a week, or whatever, even if you really think this is too resource-intensive and the kids should be in school for all the OT benefits you think it has.

Does that make sense?

Maternity leave, at least exists in the UK. A lot of people hope their daughters might have trustworthy partner to breadwin during early years,,but a degree is a good backup..otherwise you are dependent on your partner.

I agree re low literacy. Re violence between men, it doesn't seem great, but if they want to fight each other mutually, I don't really see what can be done about it. That' different from DV imo.

Travellers/Roma, 2 different things I think? Somebody pointed this out to me rightly so.

Obviously there'll be variation...but in general rules seem a lot looser for traveller boys at least.

I think pp who spoke about porn is Roma though,,not traveller.

See this is where the idea of equality just turns to nonsense for me. The difference is that men can't get pregnant. So on some level it's madness for a woman to risk sex before marriage (I know, I know, contraception, sexual compatibility etc etc.)

The perceived double standards for traveller men and traveller women arises from the vastly different degrees of risk.

Ex teacher

I taught in an area that had a large travellers site.

in general it seemed that the children were sent to primary school.

i got the impression that learning to read and write was seen as helpful.

i taught in the secondary and a few kids did come up to us. They mostly couldn’t read or write very well and I (along with some of my colleagues) ran 1:1 sessions trying to teach them to read.

i can’t say it was overly successful but we did feel that we had to try.

An awful lot of people not just travellers are not happy with the state that many secondary schools are in. There’s a lot of people either going private, deregistering and getting tutors for maths and English, or just opting out.

most primaries rely on reading at home and support at home with phonics which obviously is a problem if the parents also have literacy problems.

obviously many travellers do not like aspects of settled culture (women working, sex before marriage etc etc) and equally many settled people don’t like aspects of traveller culture (bare knuckle fighting, the violence generally, the double sexual standard - men can have sex with who they want when they want but women can only have sex after marriage and only with their husband - which settled women fought quite hard to get rid of).

however - I’m disabled. I don’t like a lot of what the state does and how it provides things but I know full well it ain’t gonna change just because I don’t like it and my choices are to work within the system for what I want.

the way the world works is getting increasingly against people who travel and don’t have qualifications and pick up cash in hand jobs. In a world of phones and Apple Pay and HMRC right to work it just gets harder and harder to keep that culture going.

nobody in this country can completely ignore the state. Do something settled culture considers a crime and the fact you can’t read the court documents isn’t going to stop you from going to prison.

the settled people who work with travellers are trying to make that interface between travellers and the state work better - not to help the state - it fundamentally has the last resort of organised violence and prison - but to ameliorate the impact on travellers who haven’t got the faintest hope of fighting the state on it’s own terms.

I agree with you about trans.

Can I ask thought how you'd react if a child were gay? Would this be strongly opposed?

They just go off the radar. Were we live there’s a lot of settled travellers living on sites. Dd went to a small primary school where a significant proportion of kids were travellers (probably a third of her year). The boys seem to go to secondary school (for a year or two), the girls never do. It’s deemed inappropriate for the girls. 🤷‍♀️. It’s sad, they know at the end of the year six that’s it for them and they will be staying at home cooking and cleaning. I feel for them at leavers assembly.

The teachers know what’s happening but the parents say they’re moving to Ireland/moving wherever and nobody follows it up. Short of raiding the travellers site and looking for kids what can they do? There would be a riot if they tried that. The police won’t even go on the site, can’t imagine the truant officer checking it out.

I seem to remember an incident around election time that the police attended though nothing came of it. But I was more thinking about baby factories and being trapped. See also Kate Middleton. None of these women have a life I'd want for my daughters.

Why is it perceived as OK to have sex with non traveller women then and potentially cause a pregnancy?

I understand what you are saying. However, I've seen evidence that suggests it's not simply that traveller women are off limits due to pregnancy but that non traveller women are seen as sexually immoral (while traveller women need to be kept pure)

Rom come in many shapes and sizes. Just like you we have a large range of occupations and a large range of skills and abilities.
Most Rom don't think flushing toilets in the place you cook, eat, breathe and do everything else is hygienic.
A mans ability to hold his own without weapons is respected and always was.
Our men do box, but we don't have the same big interest in it as Irish travelers, and its more about the ability to block, duck and avoid getting hit, than to bloody each other.
But men of all communities want to pay to see if they can knock down a good boxer, so it's a skill that can be fallen back on for money.
Homosexuality isn't encouraged because of lack of children through it, and with boys, the spread of disease, but it has always existed, but isn't flaunted.

Kate Middleton's a pretty extreme example. Most women are not married to the heir to the throne.

Moreover, Kate has had an education and appeared to marry William with her eyes open, she wasn't excessively young etc. It's a bit much to call her a 'baby factory". Maybe she wants 3 kids? It's hardly a lot!

I don't think Carrie J, Nigella or Kate are reallly relevant here?