Education the answer?
Home tutoring is a common choice among travellers and in some places the local council chips in by providing education support. It is a requirement that local councils have an education support department for travellers but educating them is not a statutory requirement, says Nikki Wills team manager for Traveller Education Support Services (TESS).
After sixteen years with the team Nikki has seen a slow but definite improvement take place in the community and believes education is the answer to most problems.
She says, “It is necessary to make sure the children are accessing their basic rights to education which helps them build their confidence and society accept them as part of it.”
She is however worried about the future of travellers education. With the recent grant allowing schools to become academies and having a choice of rejecting "challenging students" she feels travellers will be the first to go. And govt authorities won’t be able to support education grants for them anymore undoing years of work.
Twelve year old April Burton from North Yorkshire is a bright young girl who, according to her mother Anne Burton, is a class ahead as compared to others her age. April, who just passed primary school, will receive home tuitions for secondary school. Her mother, also educated, encourages her studies and dreams of April completing higher education but worries about bullying. April relates how her friends refused to believe she was a Gypsy. She says, “When I told them they stared at me with disbelief and said ‘It can’t be; you’re too clean and well mannered’.”
Nikki Wills says home tutoring is better than no education but overall they are still missing out on main stream education and other facilities that most others have access to.