Exclusion of Travellers in state schools

Travellers in Scotland and the rest of the UK are often still mobile. In pa rticular, the showground and circus communities remain highly mobile for mu ch of the year. The overt stereotyping, discrimination and racial prejudice faced mostly by Gypsies and Travellers is said to keep them out of schools and certainly has contributed to low attendance levels and even non-attend ance and dropout before the due leaving date. The research carried out in S cotland over a six-year period included both quantitative and qualitative m ethods, targeted schools, local authorities and a range of Travellers repre senting different groups, life-styles and generations. The reality of disru pted learning for schools and for Travellers is revealed. For those who do access schools and attend regularly there are still many covert barriers to successful learning. Such institutional discrimination has not previously been researched and is hardly acknowledged, yet makes a significant contrib ution to Travellers' success or failure in school. The mismatch between the se pupils' particular learning needs and the provision made for a settled, local community offers a paradigm for many other interrupted learners: redu ced self-esteem, demotivation, disaffection and eventual dropout for some. The essentially excluding school system and the self-excluding Traveller pu pil (parental condoned absence) conspire to perpetuate cycles of underachie vement and marginalization, confirming their social exclusion within societ y. Yet, at a grass roots level, innovative projects and approaches are bein g developed on an ad hoc basis. At the European level, particular emphasis is put on the need for open and Distance Learning to support Travellers. Th e lack of state funded-support for out of school learning does little to en gage Travellers with learning. The findings are described and analysed with in the broader framework of the literature and practices in this area in Eu rope and Australia.