STEP

photographs of children

Scottish Traveller Education Programme

 

 

Welcome

 

Contact STEP

About STEP

 

News and Events

 

Additional Support for Learning - the facts

* *
 

eLearning and Traveller Education Scotland (eLATES)

 

Gypsies and Travellers in Scotland

Research

 

Resources

STEP publications

articles available

library

reports, policy and legislation

contacts

related projects

links

 

Site Map

 

 

 

Resources: Articles: TRAVELLER CULTURE AND LIFESTYLE AS FACTORS INFLUENCING CHILDREN'S INTEGRATION INTO MAINSTREAM SECONDARY SCHOOLS IN WEST BELFAST

MARGARET REYNOLDS, DERMOT MCCARTAN and DAMIAN KNIPE

British Journal of Inclusive Education, Oct - Dec 2003, Vol. 7, No. 4, 403-414

(Originally received 6 March 2002; accepted in final form 4 February 2003)

back to main list of articles

click here for a printer-friendly version of this article

 

In 1997, the Department of Education for Northern Ireland made the decision to mainstream Traveller children into secondary schools including those in West Belfast. Before then, Traveller children over 11 years of age remained in a dedicated school for all Traveller children of school age living within the catchment area of West Belfast. This paper presents the findings of a small-scale research project that examined the experiences of Traveller children attending two West Belfast secondary schools which have integrated Traveller children into mainstream education since 1997. It also discusses ramifications of mainstreaming for Traveller parents in West Belfast. The project focused particularly on the following: the attitudes of Traveller children to mainstreaming and inclusion at secondary level; the possibilities mainstreaming offers for furthering the inclusion of Travellers into the community at large; and the perceptions of Traveller parents in West Belfast to mainstreaming in secondary schools.

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY

Issues surrounding equality and equal opportunities have been of particular international concern in the last 50 years, as evidenced, for example, by the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 and subsequent attempts by the United Nations (UN) to provide for the rights of individuals and groups through international law. However, Dickson and Bell (1998) claimed that the effectiveness of international law depends on the willingness of individual countries to change their national laws accordingly. They claim that the UN's 'efforts' have been 'exhortatory' rather than 'mandatory' (p. 57). Therefore, despite increasing international pressure to meet the needs of minority groups, there were few prescriptions for legislation at the level of individual jurisdictions. As recently as 1996, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) noted that minority groups in the UK were still experiencing discrimination in a range of central services, such as education.

Where provision for equality of opportunity in general is concerned, education has a crucial role in creating an inclusive society (Craft 1996). In the UK, the issue of social class and the need to ensure equal access to education for all dominated educational discourse about equality of opportunity in the 1960s and 1970s, but towards the 1990s interest became focused on meritocracy and egalitarianism in general. Issues such as racial equality, gender equality and latterly equal opportunities for those with disabilities have been the focus for research and debate in relation to the fair division of goods in society.

As part of this agenda, there have been attempts to promote equality of opportunity through educational provision. The Northern Ireland Curriculum, for example, was introduced in 1989 to ensure the spiritual, moral, cultural, intellectual and physical development of all pupils. Enshrined in the Education Reform Order of 1989, which introduced a common curriculum in Northern Ireland, was the notion of equality of opportunity. The use of an equal opportunities framework has not been without contention, however. Questions about the meaning of equality and how equal opportunities can operate in the education system, which by its very nature could be seen as competitive, have confused the issue. In addition, the extent to which ethnic minorities have specific needs has been largely ignored despite claims (see, for example, Craft 1996) that ethnicity is a major factor in underachievement in schools. Craft states that education facilitates acculturation into the value system, economy and polity of society: it is part of the enabling process that promotes effective citizens. However as CERD noted in 1996, there have been few attempts to bridge the cultural gaps between minority ethnic groups and mainstream society, a link necessary for effective education. Drudy and Lynch (1993) claimed there had been few attempts in Irish schools to recognize the cultural traditions of minorities: ethnic groups therefore have traditionally been expected to adapt to the curriculum of school, even though it largely excludes them.

This paper addresses the issue of inclusion within the context of the mainstreaming of Traveller children in secondary schools in West Belfast. Travellers are an indigenous ethnic minority committed to nomadism as a central element of their cultural identity. Traditionally, Travellers have experienced antipathy and rejection from the settled, mainstream community, and this is exacerbated by the general lack of appropriate provision of caravan sites and access to social services or healthcare. There is estimated to be 1366 Travellers living in Northern Ireland (Irwin and Dunn 1997), with approximately three-quarters having been born there. In 2000, an Education and Training Inspectorate (ETI) Report entitled Education Other Than at School/Special Support Programme for Peace and Reconciliation (EOTAS/SSPPR. 2000) documented that there were 454 primary school children and 162 post-primary pupils belonging to the Traveller community in Northern Ireland.

Before the 1950s, Travellers were deemed by society to be rural nomads who traded in tin-smithing and horses, occasionally worked on farms, cleaned chimneys, and often carried out door-to-door sales in household products. They applied their skills to a variety of work and covered a number of different areas doing so. This type of economy that Travellers practised came into competition after the Second World War with what Mann-Kler (1997: 6) reported as 'urbanisation, mechanisation, the introduction of plastic, rural depopulation and increased mobility for the rest of the rural community'. Connolly and Keenan (2000a: 14) felt that 'such changes rendered many traditional Traveller crafts and trades redundant'. Because of these factors the Travelling community had no option but to explore new opportunities based mainly in towns and cities. This gave rise to them adapting their skills and developing new trades in dealing with scrap metal, laying tarmac, and market trading in, for example, carpets and rugs. This proved difficult for many Travellers, especially in relation to their culture of nomadism. A lack of well-serviced sites in the towns and cities limited their mobility to travel around different locations, trading on sites was restricted and there was suspicion on the part of the settled community towards dealing with Travellers selling products or offering services.

Belonging to a minority ethnic group such as Travellers means they have a common ancestry, share fundamental cultural values and traditions, have a language of their own, and are seen by themselves and others as distinct and different. In relation to common ancestry, it is not a case of becoming a Traveller, you have to be born as such; traditionally, Travellers would marry someone within their minority ethnic group. For Travellers it is crucial to maintain cultural values and traditions. Family connections and forging partnerships with extended families are a central element to Traveller culture and lifestyle, as is the tradition of being self-employed and adapting to a Traveller economy. Weddings and funerals are major events in the tradition of Travellers and are marked by large gatherings. These ritual celebrations and other aspects of their tradition are passed down through the generations. There is a specific language associated with Travellers known as Shelta, or what the Travellers themselves refer to as Gammon or Cant; how far this language is adopted by the new generation of Travellers is open to question.

Travellers share experience of social exclusion with other ethnic nomadic groups in Europe, for example the Roma/Gypsies, who also face wide-scale disadvantage and discrimination. Drudy and Lynch (1993) claimed that the minority status of Travellers has traditionally either been ignored or insufficiently addressed and this raised serious issues about the social inclusion of Travellers and their acceptance as a legitimate ethnic group in society. The social exclusion of Travellers in Northern Ireland has been documented by many of the voluntary sector Traveller support groups which have raised awareness of the disadvantages Travellers face regarding such issues as long-term unemployment, education, poor living conditions, health, mortality rate, and the attitudes and behaviour of the settled community. Long-term unemployment is rife among Travellers with approximately only one in 10 employed and the remainder heavily reliant on social security benefits. Regarding the education of Travellers, the vast majority do not have any formal qualifications and a large proportion are illiterate. Non-attendance at school is a major problem among the Traveller community in Northern Ireland and for those children attending secondary school; the majority do not stay on after the age of 16. Unsuitable living conditions and the lack of sites and basic amenities such as running water, sanitation and electricity are a further significant problem experienced by Traveller families. Owing to the poor standard of accommodation and facilities, there are high levels of ill health, with the mortality rate for Traveller children being devastatingly high. Added to these is the apparent lack of acceptance from the settled community towards Travellers. Connolly and Keenan (2000b), in their report investigating racial attitudes and prejudice in Northern Ireland, found from a survey carried out with approximately 1300 people drawn from across Northern Ireland that nearly half of those surveyed did not actually believe that the nomadic lifestyle of Travellers was valid and consequently felt that the government should not adequately support and resource it. Again approximately half the respondents stated they would not be willing to accept Irish Travellers who had come to live in Northern Ireland as citizens of Northern Ireland and they did not want them as residents in their local area. Two-thirds felt they would not like a Traveller as a work colleague, slightly more would not want them as close friends and nearly four in five would not want them as a relative by way of marrying a close member of their family.

Travellers have been recognized by the European Parliament (Resolution 89/C) as one of the groups most socially excluded from school education and with the highest levels of illiteracy. In terms of admission to schools, it has been accepted practice that Traveller children attend the nearest mainstream primary and secondary schools. In Northern Ireland academic selection takes places at the age of 11. Transfer from primary to grammar schools is based on the result of a transfer test: those pupils whom the test identifies as the most able largely transfer to grammar schools. All other pupils transfer at age 11 to secondary schools. It is to this latter group of schools that traditionally Traveller pupils have transferred, although since 1995 a small number of Traveller pupils have transferred to grammar schools (DENI 2002).

The social inclusion of Travellers has become a major issue for government in Northern Ireland in recent years and provision for Travellers has been consistently under review. In 1998, Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act was introduced to ensure that all statutory bodies in carrying out their functions have due regard to the need to promote equality of opportunity in relation to nine specific groups, one of which is racial group which includes Travellers. There are several organizations in Ireland as a whole that have been lobbying government on the part of Travellers and have brought issues of inclusion and social justice under the spotlight, for example Traveller Movement Northern Ireland and Pavee Point.

In July 1998, the government in Northern Ireland launched a special initiative -  Targeting Social Need. This initiative had the task of ensuring that the needs of the most disadvantaged groups, including Travellers, would be addressed. The Final Report of the Promoting Social Inclusion (PSI) Group on Travellers (2000) made 10 recommendations in relation to education. These covered areas such as: pre-school provision, compulsory education provision, existing funding arrangements, non-attendance, the curriculum, integration, support and encouragement to Traveller parents, and monitoring and research. Regarding integration, the report recommended to:

. . . develop a clear strategy and action plan to phase out St. Mary's (formerly St. Paul's) - the Traveller-only primary school in Belfast - over a five year period. This should include thorough consultation and practical actions with Traveller parents which address their concerns about integration, their own experiences of educational provision and their expectations for their children. (pp. 20-21)

As stated above, one of the most important social processes in promoting inclusion is education. It is accepted that the Northern Ireland Curriculum has at its heart the aspiration to provide a broad and balanced education for every child irrespective of social class, religious persuasion, ethnic status, origin or cultural preference. It is commonly held that through the process of education children should be equipped with a range of skills, accumulated knowledge and the personal outlook and confidence to enable them to fulfil their roles as workers, citizens and social beings. The aspiration of policymakers may be that education should support all children equally and discriminate against none, yet in a technologically advanced society many children emerge from the educational system ill equipped academically, socially or vocationally (Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre 2000).

Typically, children from minority groups in Ireland find themselves allocated to the lowest ability groupings in schools (Drudy and Lynch 1993) and Travellers are no exception. Drudy and Lynch claimed there was much evidence to support the view that labelling of pupils as low achievers led to a self-fulfilling prophecy. However, there is evidence (ETI 2000) that a coordinated approach to Traveller education has had an impact in Northern Ireland on the academic achievement of Traveller pupils. The Education and Training Inspectorate in Northern Ireland claimed that 'the traditional association of the Traveller child with least able classes. . . is no longer as tenable as it was' (p. 3). Furthermore, it claimed that there was evidence that some Traveller children were achieving their potential in public examinations.

One inclusion issue of central concern in Northern Ireland is that Traveller children should be integrated as far as possible into mainstream schools and that diversity in general and Traveller culture in particular should be celebrated. Integration of Traveller pupils in mainstream schools has generally been educational policy in Northern Ireland. Significantly one of the largest concentrations of Travellers in Northern Ireland is in the area of West Belfast where Traveller children attend a Traveller-only primary school. Until 1997 this school was also responsible for the education of Traveller children of secondary school age, but since then these children have attended the local secondary schools. Since that time there has been little systematic study of Traveller culture and lifestyle as factors influencing the integration of Traveller children into mainstream secondary schools. This study aims to do just that.

THE STUDY

A small-scale qualitative approach was used to study the effects of mainstreaming on Traveller children in two West Belfast secondary schools. From the literature, the problems that Traveller children often experience at school were identified as bullying, educational disadvantage and absenteeism (Jordan 2001). Semistructured interviews were used to map the experiences of Traveller children and to ascertain the views of their parents. The principals of the two secondary schools were contacted and they identified approximately 28 Traveller children enrolled in both schools. All  the Traveller children in the two schools were listed as having special needs and all were receiving additional support from special needs teachers.

In the interview situation, an approach was adopted which was empathetic whilst retaining some sense of objectivity. Traveller parents were interviewed in a place of their choice in order to give them a sense of ownership of the process and, where requested, groups of parents were interviewed together in communal areas within the Traveller sites. With the agreement of the interviewees, a tape recording and brief notes were made during the interviews.

The interviews were constructed to collate Traveller views of school and to determine what they saw as problems or benefits and to see if their views had changed with the advent of mainstreaming.

Traveller children were asked about the following:

  • Likes and dislikes of their secondary school experience.
  • Their views on the relevance of education for them.
  • Factors that affected their attendance and achievement.
  • Home/school links.
  • Their interaction with settled children in school.
  • Attitude of their peers to school.
  • Relevance they thought school would have for their future employment.

Questions to the parents of Traveller children were in relation to the following:

  • Their general attitude to education.
  • Its value for their children.
  • Perceived benefits of their children attending secondary school.
  • Social aspects of schooling.
  • Whether their children socialized with non-Traveller children outside of school.
  • Whether their children participated in extracurricular activities.
  • Their children's attendance at school and the factors that influenced this.
  • Links between parent and schools.
  • Relevance of their children now attending mainstream secondary schools for future job prospects.

FINDINGS

The reasons why disadvantage is such an intractable problem are complex but quite often it is the result of dysfunction between home and school cultures in areas such as linguistic development, family circumstances or attitudes to education generally (Bernstein 1971, Woodhead and McGrath 1988, Fontana 1995). The findings in the present paper indicate that factors such as how Traveller children and their parents approach education, in particular their prevailing culture and semi-nomadic way of life seemed to have significant mediating effects on educational progress and achievement. In recent times the nomadic lifestyle of Travellers has become less pronounced in many cases, with many opting for a more settled way of life in identified areas, although movement and travel are still evident for social or economic reasons. Research indicates that men tend to travel in occasional, unpredictable patterns while the main family, women, children and older men, tend to remain static in their settled community (Belfast Traveller Sites Report 2000). There is also evidence, as indicated here, of an increasing desire for wider integration into the community structure on the part of some Travellers. The more sedentary culture has further prompted greater efforts in mainstreaming Traveller children into secondary education and encouraging more sustained interest in and attendance at school generally. The overall structure and model of educational delivery, however, does not change to facilitate Traveller involvement and it is clear that attitudes and practices within the system might need to be investigated. In Northern Ireland access to education is not an issue for Traveller families, rather there are other historical and cultural issues which influence patterns of educational attendance and achievement.

In West Belfast Traveller children for the last 30 years have attended a Traveller-only primary school. This school was poorly sited and inadequately resourced, but has recently been replaced by a new Traveller-only primary school with much better facilities. At secondary level, however, Traveller children are required by the Department of Education to enter into mainstream education where they will integrate and study with their peers from the settled community. Entry into secondary level education can be quite traumatic for all children so it is of greater concern that we understand the academic, social and cultural leap that 11- or 12-year-old Travellers must make when attempting to adjust to the demands of secondary education. Traveller children in general have a less well-developed home base in terms of linguistic and scholastic preparation. It is highly likely that most parents of Traveller children can neither read nor write sufficiently well themselves (Kenny 1997, Belfast Traveller Sites Report 2000). Traveller children are frequently absent from school as a result of greater cultural or social imperatives, usually domestic or economic in nature. Increased or persistent absenteeism leads to incremental discontinuity in terms of academic progress and this cycle continues to repeat itself eventually leading to further absence, disaffection or opting out of the whole educational system.

At secondary level, where many of the social and cultural realities and differentials of the Traveller lifestyle become apparent for the first time, Travellers reported that they accepted the fact that there was a clash between their lifestyle and the educational process. Most families defended and affirmed their semi-nomadic culture. Even when settled or housed, Travellers are still inclined to seek self-employment opportunities elsewhere. The Travellers also referred to the strong social and family connections within Ireland which they felt they must regularly maintain, often by attending cultural and social gatherings or engaging in cooperative, income- generating enterprises. They also conceded that, in practical terms, it seemed this lifestyle is incompatible with educational attainment which requires regular attendance at schools and it also appears very difficult to see how educational models could bend or flex to accommodate such inconsistent commitment to education and the often erratic nature of attendance patterns. The study found that Travellers recognize this dichotomy and realize they must choose between equipping their children to carry on the Traveller culture or ensuring an extended and hopefully successful educational experience for them through engaging consistently with the educational process. This is an important point around which the issue of social inclusion or exclusion of Travellers may revolve. That is to say, does the educational system conspire to exclude and discriminate against Traveller children or do their cultural imperatives lead to irrevocable patterns of participation?

Perceptions

A key outcome of this study was that Traveller perceptions of and general attitudes towards education are much more positive than would sometimes be assumed. The fact that Travellers traditionally have shown very little involvement in regular attendance at secondary school would have indicated to many within the settled community that attitudes to education were extremely negative within the Travelling community (Kenny 1997). However, the study presented here indicates this to be a simplistic inference. In reality the effects on patterns of behaviour show a greater complexity with regard to social and cultural influences. In the majority of cases parents and young people expressed a positive outlook on the benefits of participation in the education system. This was evident despite an often expressed disappointment in what had in the past been provided by way of Traveller education at primary level. The majority of Traveller children and parents interviewed in the study also remained largely positive with regard to participation in the education process despite the degree of bullying sometimes encountered at secondary level.

Cultural pressures

Understanding Traveller culture and particularly the implications of age, gender and family relationships is crucial for interpreting accurately what mediates and influences participation in secondary education. Interviews with Traveller children and their parents clearly highlighted the fact that adolescent Traveller males and females begin serious relationships and preparations for engagement and marriage to partners at a much younger age generally than those of their counterparts in the settled community. It is not uncommon for Travellers aged 14-16 to be either engaged or even married. Furthermore it emerged that an angst associated with this search for a partner was more deeply experienced among girls. This seems to be due to a strong cultural imperative for women to enter into a relationship from an early age that will culminate in as economically advantageous a marriage as possible. There are also forces at work among adolescent males to become economically active and successful from as early an age as possible in order to attract a future partner (Jordan 2001). Such traditional practices and long-held patterns of behaviour can often devalue the importance of regular participation in the education system.

The study presented also showed that this state of affairs was further complicated by the fact that many adolescent Travellers will have partners and future spouses located in other towns in Northern Ireland or in another part of Ireland entirely. The process of courtship and preparation for marriage has therefore a potentially significant disruptive effect on any attempts to involve Traveller children in regular school attendance.

Peer and home influences

From the interviews with Traveller parents and children during this study, it emerged that the age at which Traveller children are expected to become economically active and useful within the family or Traveller community in general is much younger than that of settled children. Research (Jordan 2001) shows that many male Traveller children are involved in economic activity often from a very early age, travelling with their fathers and helping them as required. The present study revealed that while this was a major source of disruption to the education that these children experience at secondary level, it was accepted as an inevitable aspect of Traveller culture and lifestyle. Female children also referred to a similar disrupted educational experience as a result of domestic and baby-minding duties when mothers were ill. This was a fairly frequent occurrence because of the standard of accommodation, hygiene and general level of deprivation associated with the sites on which the Travellers live. Again, the study showed that participation in domestic duties was regarded as a necessary part of growing up within Traveller culture. Commitments at home were given a greater priority than attendance at secondary school.

Traveller children play a role from an early age in the economic and social life of their community and they demonstrate a premature maturity and an awareness of cultural and economic imperatives. It is at this point in their development that any involvement in the educational process is challenged and often disrupted by cultural, social or economic tensions. The study found that once this role was established, the cycle of disruption was extremely difficult to break. It emerged from the study that Traveller parents become increasingly reliant on help from their children and that many children of secondary school age preferred the independence that family participation offered and the absentee episodes it prompted to regular secondary school attendance.

The study has highlighted that within the Traveller community there are wider cultural and economic imperatives that create great strains and pressures for young Traveller adolescents. These have significant effects on their outlook and view of education. The study and its findings strongly indicate that peer pressure operates on two different and competing levels and, as with all peer interaction, can also lead to friction with family opinion or practice. It has been noted already that young adolescent Travellers are anxious to be economically and socially mobile and active. This tends to have an effect on friends and other family members, particularly those who might be inclined to stay on at school in the hope of acquiring knowledge, skills or qualifications that might ameliorate their vocational or social opportunities. Interviewees spoke of the tension that existed within the family and community where peer pressure was strong to engage with gainful self-employment from an early age, leading to interrupted schooling. It also emerged that within families the desire of parents for their child to remain at school was challenged greatly by the adolescent's search for independence and economic success. This was particularly significant in male children who witnessed their friends engaged in employment or other types of enterprise.

Traveller parents recognized that the transition to an integrated secondary school from a Traveller-only primary school was fraught with difficulty for their children. Parents expressed the view that for the first time their children had experienced a major clash of cultures for which they were unprepared and with which many had great difficulty in dealing. For example, there were significant linguistic and dialect differences between Traveller children and their settled counterparts. These became very obvious when Traveller children entered mainstream schools. The effect was to set Traveller children apart from others, making them appear as somehow different and in doing so making them targets of unwarranted teasing or verbal abuse. Furthermore, many of the parents and children cited this clash of cultures as a deterrent to consistent attendance accompanied as it often was by stereotypical attitudes, bullying of Traveller children and physical assaults.

Parents generally felt that in their experience schools did very little to support Traveller children who were bullied or assaulted and the majority felt unable to approach the school and demand action. Every child interviewed had experienced some kind of aggression ranging from constant name-calling to physical abuse. The experience of the Traveller children was felt to be a major deterrent to continued participation in a system that seemed to some alien and aggressive.

For some Traveller parents, however, the hostility and bullying provided affirmation that the settled community was unfriendly and unwelcoming and sought to dilute the traditional and historical Traveller culture. The study found that there is a strong belief among Travellers that their moral and behavioural values clashed with those of the settled community. Furthermore, they feared that mainstreaming could have a detrimental effect on the mores of the Traveller community and that their culture and values could be corrupted. One parent felt so strongly about this that she refused to send her children to school on a regular basis.

Post-secondary education

Mainstreaming at secondary school might lead to a change in attitude among Traveller children to vocational training. There are small but perhaps significant examples that some Travellers are using further educational and vocational opportunities despite having missed the latter years of secondary school. There is a small group of 16-year-old Travellers attending a local training programme, the boys taking a National Vocational Qualification (NVQ) in practical subjects and the girls taking an NVQ in areas such as child-care. There are also some Traveller adults who are taking a higher level NVQ in management as part of community employment posts and in other instances as part of work placement. This kind of participation seems to indicate preparation on the part of some Travellers to engage in vocational opportunities offered in the settled community. It is possible that these Travellers will act as role models for younger Travellers who might appreciate the benefits of educational or vocational attainment and inclusion within these processes.

CONCLUSION

It was found through the study that secondary schools implicitly adopted an equal opportunities approach to the inclusion of Travellers in the education process. It would appear that schools facilitated the education of Traveller children by providing, for example, special needs tuition for them. Traveller support groups supplemented this provision by proactively creating learning opportunities for Traveller pupils that supported schooling, for example providing homework clubs for the children.

It was also found that the engagement of Travellers with the education process was a multifaceted issue revealing complex relationships between sets of goals. The Travellers' approach to education did not reflect common stereotypical assumptions about their attitudes, for instance it was not found that Traveller culture was opposed in principle to education. Rather, the attitudes of Travellers to education reflected a range of tensions between negative and positive influences, such as the retention of a nomadic lifestyle yet a desire for further educational opportunities.

It was found that Travellers did not accept either the structures that pertain in education or the same expectations that the settled community had of schools in terms of modes, rules and regulations. However, that does not mean that some of the expectations that Travellers have of schools do not reflect those of society at large. For example, the Traveller parents expected their schools to have an appropriate range of rules and regulations and they looked for the setting of learning outcomes and achievement. It was also found that Travellers wanted to have a sense of ownership of the schools their children attended. They felt that mainstream schools were not usually places where they felt at home or accepted and for that reason they feared a dilution of their culture would result from their children attending mainstream schools.

There were indications from the study that if schools broadened their approach to inclusion and went beyond an implicit equal opportunities perspective, some of the tensions between the Traveller culture and the mores of the education system could be resolved. This would involve the proactive participation of schools in seeking the means to ameliorate the conditions of conflict, for example periodic nomadism. It would also require a reframing of the approach to Traveller education so that Traveller children were not singled out as departing from the norm. Rather their needs would then be accepted as falling within the range of expectations of children in general. For this, of course, secondary schools would require not only an evaluation of their approach to inclusion, but also considerable resources and support in terms for example of staff development.

A crucial indication of this study is the need for further research of the views of teachers and other education professionals that would give a multilevel approach to the study of the integration of Traveller children into secondary schools. Schools cannot be expected to approach inclusion without the societal support required and the desire on the part of those responsible for policy-making to follow through from policy to practice.

Correspondence should be addressed to Margaret Reynolds: Faculty of Education, St. Mary's University College. BELFAST BT12 6FF, UK. e-mail: m.reynolds@stmarys-belfast.ac.uk

REFERENCES

Belfast Traveller's Sites Project (2000) Belfast Traveller Sites Report (Belfast: Belfast Traveller's Sites Project).

Bernstein B. (1971) On the classification and framing of educational knowledge. In M. F. D. Young (ed.), Knowledge and Control (London: Collier-Macmillan).

Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (1996) Report of the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (New York: UN Document A/51/18).

Connolly, P. and Keenan, M. (2000a) Opportunities for All: Minority Ethnic People's Experiences of Education, Training and Employment in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency).

Connolly, P. and Keenan, M. (2000b) Racial Attitudes and Prejudice in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Northern Ireland Statistics & Research Agency).

Craft, M. (1996) Cultural diversity and teacher education. In M. Craft (ed.), Teacher Education in Plural Societies (London: Falmer).

Department of Education Northern Ireland (2002) Traveller movement Northern Ireland response to the post-primary education review [http://www.deni.gov.uk/pprb/oldweb/feedback/written/other-interests/TravMoveNI.htm] (accessed 10 December 2002).

Dickson, B. and Bell, M. (1998) The international context. In P. Hainsworth (ed.), Divided Society (London: Pluto).

Drudy, S. and Lynch, K. (1993) Schools and Society in Ireland (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan).

Education and Training Inspectorate (2000) EOTAS/SSPPR (Belfast: Department of Education Northern Ireland).

Fontana, D. (1995) Psychology for Teachers (Basingstoke: Macmillan).

Irwin, G. and Dunn, S. (1997) Ethnic Minorities in Northern Ireland (Belfast: University of Ulster Coleraine, Centre for the Study of Conflict).

Jordan, E. (2001) Exclusion of travellers in state schools. Educational Research, 43, 117-132.

Kenny, M. (1997) The Routes of Resistance: Travellers and Second-Level Schooling (Aldershot: Ashgate).

Mann-KIer, D. (1997) Out of the Shadows: An Action Research Report into Families, Racism and Exclusion in Northern Ireland (Belfast: Barnardo's et al.).

Northern Ireland Economic Research Centre (2000) Young People and Social Exclusion in Northern Ireland (Belfast: NIERC).

Promoting Social Inclusion Working Group on Travellers (2000) Final Report of the Promoting Social Inclusion Working Group on Travellers (Belfast: Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister).

Resolution 89/C 153/02 (No. C 153/3) (1989) Resolution on the School Provision for Gypsy and Traveller Children. 22 May (Strasbourg: European Parliament)

Woodhead, M. and McGrath, A. (1988) Family, School and Society (London: Hodder & Stoughton).