Mr. Bernard Joyce:

I thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to present to the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Education and Skills. The Irish Traveller Movement was founded in 1990 and is a nationally-based Traveller-led organisation representing our members. One of its core values and principles is to challenge the racism Travellers face in Ireland today.

Setting out the historical context is important and I draw the committee’s attention to the experience of Travellers within the State education system. Not commonly known to the wider community is the importance of awareness of the historical experiences of the Traveller population in terms of the fundamental rights and wrongs of the past and instilling confidence going into the future.

From the 1970s up to the present day, there were segregated schools in Ireland. Children were educated in Traveller-only schools and classes from the 1970s up to 2000. From this point, Traveller segregation began to be phased out. Many Travellers today recall horrific stories of being washed when they came into school and having separate play and lunch times to their settled peers. The expectations of these children by their teachers were extremely poor. Many were left to draw pictures and play and many today are unable to read or write.

Those experiences still influence how Traveller parents engage with the education system, as well as how they respond to their children’s experiences of racist bullying within school. In January 2017 the report commissioned by the Department of Justice and Equality from the Economic and Social Research Institute, A Social Portrait of Travellers in Ireland, indicated that Travellers experienced extreme disadvantage in employment, housing and healthcare and faced exceptionally strong levels of prejudice. The gap between Traveller participation and retention in education has worsened compared to their settled counterparts. I will refer to this aspect again.

Unfortunately, in 2011 Traveller-specific educational supports were cut by 87%. The cuts included the withdrawal of the visiting teacher service, resource teachers for Travellers in primary schools, allocation of teaching hours in second level schools and enhanced capitation payments at primary and second level. The cuts were made at the time of the highest retention rates of Traveller pupils from primary to post-primary institutions in the State. They decimated the support infrastructure for Traveller education and had a detrimental impact on Travellers' educational progression.

I also bring the committee's attention to reduced timetables, which is a real concern, of which some members may be aware. The Irish Traveller Movement has raised this matter, as have other organisations. In many instances, it is Traveller parents who are monitoring and reporting to Traveller organisations which, in turn, have brought these concerns to various Ministers. We are concerned that in certain areas no school or only one actively supports the inclusion of Travellers. Such a school then informally becomes the school in the area to which Travellers are directed and becomes seen as "the Traveller school". Non-Traveller children and their peers are denied the opportunity to learn about Travellers within the education curriculum. There is an opportunity to correct this through Senator Colette Kelleher's Private Members' Bill dealing with the inclusion of Traveller history and culture within the mainstream curriculum. We understand it has both Government and cross-party support. It also has full community support.

The Irish Traveller Movement is very concerned about the practice of having reduced timetables across the country. We know about these concerns because parents are reporting them to us. There is no monitoring of the practice by Tusla or the Department of Education and Skills; instead the responsibility is placed on parents to make a complaint via section 29 of the Education Act 1998. This issue must be addressed.

The majority of schools have systematically failed to recognise Traveller culture and Travellers' way of life is invisible across the school setting. As a result, non-Traveller children are denied the opportunity to learn about Traveller culture in a positive learning environment, thus increasing the chances of their views being formed by the negative stereotypical views of Travellers that persist in wider society. We look forward to exploring other matters we have raised in our submission on Traveller children's progression within the education system.