Anti-Traveller discrimination embedded in schools - study

Discrimination, exclusion and structural inequalities against Traveller children are embedded within the Irish education system, research carried out by University College Cork and a Cork Traveller education organisation has found.

Based on in-depth interviews with Traveller teenagers, mothers and mentors, the study, 'Traveller Transitions: Racialised Inequalities in Education', makes a number of findings, including that the transition from primary to post-primary education is an especially difficult time for Traveller children, and that students experience institutional racism in a number of sometimes subtle ways.

National statistics show that only 27% of young Travellers complete their post-primary education, compared with 97% of the wider population, and that less than 1% of Travellers go on to third-level education.

The report identifies early post-primary school as a particularly vulnerable and formative period.

"This report makes clear that the barriers facing Traveller students are part of deeper structural inequalities that require urgent attention," Chairperson of the Cork Traveller Education Unit Anne Burke said.

Twenty-nine individuals took part in the qualitative study.

It finds institutional racism against Traveller students expressed through what it calls the "explicit segregation" of Traveller students, through social exchanges that demean Traveller culture and through actions that amount to what the report calls the targeted disciplining of Traveller bodies.

Traveller teenagers and their parents complained that they were segregated from settled students during the school day.

The study concludes that this is a significant factor in them considering leaving school.

One teenage girl told researchers: "I get taken out for like basically every class. So… I don't really know what’s going on in class because I’m mainly taken out…The boredom and all that. I don’t like it. It makes me just want to leave."

The report states: "Further action on this is crucial because we know that segregating practices can be devastating for children and that they can have a hugely negative impact on their wellbeing and inter-peer relationships."

While they feel segregated from settled students during class-time, Traveller students also complained that they are prevented from mixing freely with each other during break times.

"Like from the start, I was told I was mixing with the wrong group and then they won’t allow us to sit together and they try and move us apart from each other," one 14-year-old told researchers.

Criticising this practice, the study says it is based on "an idea of what some schools think integration ought to look like".

It notes that peer relationships between Traveller children are a "critical protective factor" and calls the practice "detrimental to their emotional wellbeing and their sense of belonging".

"This report provides insight into how Traveller young people are navigating the everyday realities of post-primary school life," lead researcher Professor Nicola Ingram, Head of UCC School of Education, said.

"For too many, school is experienced as a hostile place of hurt and pain, marked by negative interactions and exclusionary practices.

"Our research finds that ethnic segregation and restrictions on social connection can deepen feelings of isolation, loneliness and disengagement from education."

Key findings include that anti-Traveller racism is not always experienced as overt, but can happen through everyday micro-aggressions.

Examples cited in the report include Traveller children being praised for being "clean", which the study says arises out of the persistence of negative cultural assumptions among the settled community that Travellers are "unclean".

Young Travellers also complained of being more heavily policed in school because they are Travellers.

"Like with me when I go into school, I hang around with my cousins and my family. So then, by doing that then, you’re just classed as trouble… even when you’re not doing anything, like, could be just chatting, like, you’re just classed as trouble by your demeanour, just by chatting and by knowing who you are," one young Traveller said.

The report finds that while relationships between Traveller young people and school staff are crucial for fostering an anti-racist approach to education "most Traveller young people in this study reported negative relationships with teachers".

The report makes recommendations for policymakers, schools and the wider education system.

These include partnership with Traveller organisations to embed anti-racist school governance, stronger supports for students moving from primary to post-primary school, monitoring to prevent ethnic segregation in school practices and mandatory staff education on the experiences of Traveller young people and anti-Traveller racism.