Schooling and Travelling Communities

Exploring the Spaces of Educational Exclusion

Dave Cudworth

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9783319913636
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319913643
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

This book calls for a re-thinking of educational provision for Gypsy / Traveller communities. Despite having been recognised by the government and educational providers for over fifty years, underachievement of children from Gypsy / Traveller communities persists. Rather than focusing specifically on access, attendance and attainment, the author provides a structural analysis of the cultural tensions that often exist between Nomadic communities and current school provision based on the interests and values of Sedentarism. The author uses spatial theory as a base upon which to build knowledge and understanding of the educational exclusion of children from Gypsy / Traveller communities, highlighting the social role that space plays within schools. This innovative book will be of interest and value for students and scholars interested in not only education and Gypsy / Traveller communities, but education for minority communities more widely. 

© The Author(s) 2018

Dave CudworthSchooling and Travelling Communitieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-91364-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Introduction

Dave Cudworth¹

(1)

School of Applied Social Sciences, De Montfort University, Leicester, UK

Dave Cudworth

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

The educational ‘underachievement’ of Gypsy/Traveller children was first identified in the late 1960s. The inability of children from these communities to read and write due to a lack of schooling became a major concern (DES 1967). As a result, a number of different policy initiatives and support mechanisms were pursued to address these concerns. These initially included support in the form of summer schools of voluntary teachers teaching children and adults on Gypsy/Traveller sites (Cemlyn et al. 2009). Later, local education authority provision came in the form of qualified teachers visiting sites in mobile caravans. Finally, with an emphasis on ‘multiculturalism’ and inclusion, particularly during the 1990s and 2000s, a network of Traveller Education Support Services (TESS) were set up as well as subsequent targeted funding to provide further focused support for Gypsy/Traveller children in mainstream classrooms (Derrington and Kendall 2007a). However, although such targeted involvement had some impact ‘…these pupils remain amongst the most vulnerable’ (Wilkin et al. 2010: viii) and ‘among the lowest-achieving groups at every Key Stage of education’ (DFE 2012).

In order to investigate why these children remain amongst the most vulnerable in relation to school ‘engagement’ and ‘achievement’, this book explores literature which suggests that a key factor involved is related to the historical and cultural formation of a Sedentarised society and the subsequent demonization of Nomadism and a Nomadic way of life (Derrington and Kendall 2007a, b). The relationship here with educational success is that schooling in England has increasingly involved children being settled in one place and attending the same school at each stage of schooling. This is to ensure that children and young people remain ‘on track’ to achieve a particular educational trajectory that will ultimately prepare them for access to university at the age of 18–19, i.e. good SATs (Standardised Assessment Tasks) results at Key Stage (KS) 1 and 2 (children aged 5–7 and 7–11 respectively), five or more A–C grades at KS3 (aged 11–16) and three or more good ‘A’ levels, or equivalent, at KS4 (aged 16–18). Schools themselves are also keen for children to do well in these tests, as good results will secure a strong position in published league tables, which has become the tool used to measure a ‘good’ school.

Despite changes in the occupational practices of many Gypsy/Traveller communities in England mobility remains very much part of their lives; which in turn affects the attendance of children at school, and thus their overall engagement and educational experience. Although many of these communities are settled on sites, with some even taking up permanent housing (Clark and Greenfields 2006; Kenny 2014), it is this value attributed to Nomadism and mobility as a cultural way of life, that remains a key factor at the heart of children’s schooling engagement, experience and retention (Derrington 2007).

The irony here is that educational achievement today seems to be about an ability to be able to move and settle in an area that has a ‘good’ school. The wider social, cultural and political aims of current educational provision being framed within a globalised context (Rizvi and Lingard 2009) also suggests the need to be mobile in order to access and strive in the global market. It therefore appears that the mobility of Gypsy/Traveller communities is a different mobility to that engaged by the ‘mobile’ Sedentarised population. Such ideas connect with the work of Skeggs (2004: 49) who notes that ‘Mobility is a resource to which not everyone has an equal relationship’. There are different degrees of mobility, based on ideas of respectability whereby ‘The mobility of choice of the affluent British middle-classes, conducted in relative ease, is quite different from the mobility of the international refugee or the unemployed migrant’ (Skeggs 2004: 49). As Shubin (2011: 1930) puts it ‘There is a certain contestation between social acceptance of certain kinds of movement, and lifestyles based on continuous mobile engagement with the world’. Whereas movement from the Sedentarised community is voluntary, and seen as a ‘social good, a resource, not equally available to all’ (Skeggs 2004: 50) the mobile Gypsy/Traveller ‘has long been conceptualised as an ‘aberration’ (based on ‘Sedentarist’ thinking prioritising fixity over movement) or as ‘freedom’ to travel and escape from specific places and the trappings of the state’ (Shubin 2011: 1930). As a result nomadic movement is seen as a threat to ‘respectable mobility’ and the need to become ‘firmly fixed in order to be identifiable and governable’ (Skeggs 2004: 50). Shubin (2011) suggests that the problem is associated with this idea that the ‘mobility of travelling people is seen as detached from space and considered as simple repositioning or abstract movement with no connections to specific places’ (Shubin 2011: 1930). Therefore, nomadism as a cultural practice becomes associated with not belonging, conflating ‘placelessness’ with deviant behaviour (Leahy 2014).

In order to widen the debate this book also engages with literature that argues how neo-liberal education policy has continued to undermine educational opportunities for certain children. This has eroded the egalitarian project of social justice in terms of addressing structural inequalities that may exist. With its focus on individualism, self-interest, deregulation of the state and the privatisation of the public sector, neo-liberalism has transformed ‘every human domain and endeavour, along with humans themselves’ and reduced everything to economics (Brown 2015: 10). Walby (2009: 12) notes that ‘while neoliberalism appears to laud a small state, this is only in relation to the economy; in practice neoliberal governments simultaneously develop a large coercive state to maintain the domestic social order and position in the global state system’. Consequently, ‘all spheres of existence are framed and measured by economic terms and metrics, even when those spheres are not directly monetized’ (Brown 2015: 10), including education.

This has led to schools becoming increasingly ‘marketised’ and organised around the economic ideals of consumerism and the ‘product’ (Apple 2005). The ‘school product’ has become associated with competition and outcomes in tests, with results being published in league tables. A strong position in these league tables has therefore come to represent the marker of a ‘quality product’ that parents can ‘choose to buy’ into when seeking to find a school place for their child(ren). Consequently, with a focus on performativity schools compete to reach the top of these league tables, in order to attract parents of children who possess the ‘right attributes’ to do well in these tests and parents that value the educational trajectory that will ultimately secure their child(ren) a university place. This is the neo-liberal project, in that ‘…freeing the market from state controls was the best way to ensure economic growth, which in turn was believed to deliver human well-being, freedom, democracy, and civil liberties’ (Walby 2009: 11). The problem with this is the myth that democracy will inevitably follow as market forces and parental choice will ensure systems are fair and just for every single individual irrespective of their social and/or cultural location.

As a result, the contemporary political climate has reconfigured the conception of education and one concern expressed in this book is with how neo-liberal education policy as a globalising economic project, has impacted schooling ideologically at the expense of equality for all children. I argue how neo-liberal policy architecture has established modes of knowledge that have supressed, and even silenced, alternative narratives of education. For example narratives that relate to child-centeredness, experiential learning and the holistic development of the whole person, that maybe more consilient with progressive ideologies and early child development (Moore and Clarke 2016). I also want to assert here that neo-liberalism has reaffirmed the idea of individualism and meritocracy as a self-reliant hegemonic ideology and thus eroded ideas of collectivism and the actual responsibility of the importance of collective democratic membership and responsibility (Skeggs 1997, 2004).

Therefore for me, the question this book raises is an ontological one that relates to the tensions in the encounter between the cultural values and beliefs of nomadic communities based on mobility which is ‘considered one of the key elements of their engagement with the world’ (Shubin 2011: 1931). My thinking is that the values underpinning the expectations of neo-liberal education policy based on individualism, choice and performance and its relationship with the global economy is ontologically opposed to Gypsy/Traveller culture. Therefore, this book argues for an education system that respects the cultural identity of these travelling communities and one that is consilient with the complexities of their situation and desire to remain nomadic.

Why Gypsy/Travellers?

My primary interest in the relationship between children and young people from Gypsy/Traveller communities and schooling initially stems from my own personal experiences of being an ‘interrupted learner’ during my primary school years in England in the early 1970s. Up until the age of 10, I suppose you could argue that my family adopted a travelling lifestyle. My father was in the army and as a family we moved around quite a lot, often midway through a typical school year. As a consequence of this, my brother, twin sister and I experienced a disrupted learning pattern, often missing a few days out of school as we travelled and settled into a new place and subsequently a new school. Altogether, we attended five different primary schools between the ages of 5–11. Our younger sister, seven years my junior, on the other hand, remained in one primary school.

When my twin sister and I were 10 years old, my father retired from the army and my parents decided to buy a house and settle down in one place. My brother was 11 at the time and went on to a local secondary school, where my twin sister and I joined him and remained until the age of 16. Despite being a new comprehensive school, this secondary school had retained some of its grammar school ‘trappings’ and was streamed. On enrolling at the school we all found ourselves in the bottom ‘streams’. I remember in the first year at this school that, like my brother, I had to take extra English lessons while our peers learnt French. My twin sister made good progress and moved to the middle strea...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Schooling the Citizen: The Rise of Sedentarism
• 3. The Schooling ‘Product’: Neoliberalism and Education Policy
• 4. Space, Place and Social Relations
• 5. Gypsy/Traveller Culture and the Schooling Process
• 6. The Neoliberal Teacher and Learner
• 7. Changing Gender Relations: The Impact of Educational Spaces
• 8. In Search of Change
• Back Matter