June 2nd 2010
Ms Sarah Teather MP - Minister for State, Department for Education
Dear Minister,
As the new Minister of State for Education I am writing to you on behalf of NATT+ members to express our concern and growing alarm at the steady erosion of specialist targeted Traveller Education Services across the country.
Working with the National Strategies, a number of professionals in this field have given early years settings and schools - cross phase, sound guidance to model good practice for an inclusive education. Many local authorities have, quite rightly, included this work in their existing policy and practice.
In reality however, the bias, racism and social exclusion that still largely exists towards Gypsy Roma and Traveller communities, makes Gypsy Roma Traveller children and families vulnerable to an open door policy, without the means to help them over the threshold or securely stay there.
At the present time there remains a necessity for outreach and continued inter-agency working, to overcome the significant obstacles still experienced by families in accessing foundation stage learning, achieving in line with peers and in particular, attendance at Key stage 3/4/5. Sadly this continues to be essential although we hope for true equality in the future - a time when this will no longer be necessary.
Such specialist work needs to be safeguarded if equitable success is to be achieved in mainstream - a fact robustly proven by Government ethnicity data on achievement, exclusions, absence, representation on SEN, Gifted and Talented, NEET and post-16 participation. This is soundly reinforced by the low numbers of pupils identified by ascription. I believe you have seen the compelling evidence of this in the GRT data sent to you recently by Lord Avebury which was compiled by Brian Foster.
NATT+ has further evidence from colleagues dedicated to this work nationally, that Traveller Education Services are being diminished. While we recognise that cuts in spending need to take place, key front line work like this for vulnerable children and families needs to be retained and protected.
We fervently hope that your new government will seek to identify ways to safeguard this much needed specialist front line equality work where it is still so badly needed for this community. Please do all you can to raise this concern nationally as a policy maker.
I do hope that you can find some time in your busy schedule to meet with us to discuss this in more detail and look forward to hearing from you.
Respectfully yours,
Linda Lewins
Vice President of NATT +
Chair of NATT+ Policy and Strategy Group
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