Travellers' Education and Distance and Independent Learning
Talk given by Alison West, former Chief Executive of the National Extension College in Cambridge on June 18th 2004.
This article outlines some of the obstacles facing travellers wishing to access education and suggests that for both children and adults distance and independent learning has a lot to offer, particularly when it complements traditional school and college provision.
The National Extension College (NEC) is an educational charity that offers education to those not in a position to attend mainstream provision. NEC works with prisoners, with those acting as carers, with those studying at home through exclusion or choice. It offers education at all levels, from basic skills to degree level, with the bulk of its work at Level 2 and 3. It works with all ages, from school age to pensioners, and it also covers all of the traditional subjects (English, History, Maths etc) along with some leisure courses such as creative writing. It provides materials for tutors, and self study or assisted study for students. NEC already works with travellers and with those who organise traveller education because distance and flexible learning offers a number of advantages.
NEC is interested in a wide range of educational opportunities for travellers and in terms of possible students has material of interest to women, men, the elderly, teenagers, school age etc. It also has a range of courses and materials for work with pre-school children. NEC was established as a sister organisation to the Open University and has the same commitment to widening access. Its philosophy in relation to travellers, therefore, is that travellers have the right to all traditional mainstream education and that this should be available to them. NEC is experienced at working with students at any entry level and encouraging them to go as far as they can. Its range of courses allows progression. There is a political underpinning to this. Without losing their own sense of community, there is no reason why travellers should not have a first class education, to high levels of qualifications. Other excluded groups, including Aboriginal communities, have realised the value of growing their own in-community professionals such as doctors and lawyers. The benefits to the community are obvious and having high aspirations avoids romanticising low educational levels. Traveller education should not settle for being a remedial or a second class education and travellers should have what everyone else has – different types and levels of education, and all forms of education to be available at different ages.
This would mean making available life-needed skills such as literacy and numeracy, along with job-related skills including metalwork, driving test knowledge, money investment information etc. Realistically, subjects and levels will have to begin where people are and where they feel comfortable but academic and professional education has to be on offer and encouraged in the longer term. However, provision should also include the lighter side of adult and community education, with life-enhancing courses such as creative writing, traveller history, photography, art etc.
Offering the full range of education is quite a challenge given some of the many obstacles facing the traveller community, including:
- The simple fact that many move around and cannot commit to a long period in an educational institution
- Mobility may mean time gaps in finding a school or adult education place
- Timing may not fit the traditional academic year
- Completing a course is often difficult and not all courses bank achievement to enable it to be picked up later and finished
- Student records do not always transfer smoothly
- For school age children, their ability level may not match their chronological age and they may feel out of step with their classmates
- Adult education opportunities are hard to access if mobile
The result of these obstacles, which are primarily practical, is well known to all involved in traveller education: an over 50% drop out rate by age 14, Irish traveller children more than 20 times more likely to be excluded than non-travellers. How can an organisation like the National Extension College help, or other similar providers? Open, distance and blended learning can be an immense help to those organising traveller education. First of all there is the sheer range of courses on offer, basically about all you would ever want unless dealing with a very specialised interest. NEC, for example, offers courses in basic and key skills, childcare, 20 GCSEs, 23 AS and A2 levels, professional courses such as bookkeeping, management, marketing and accountancy, leisure courses such as art and design. In addition, they offer study skills courses to help with distance learning techniques. All courses are mapped to standard qualifications, either offering the qualification or working towards it.
In terms of how students want to study, there are a number of options. Some students like to work through study workbooks on their own, with a high degree of self-assessment. (Prisoners doing basic skills liked this method since it allowed them to go at their own pace) Other students prefer a lot of contact with a tutor and this can be either face to face or at a distance, using post or e-contact or phone. Students can work as individuals or in groups if they prefer and one big advantage of this system is that you do not have minimum class sizes at all. Courses can be started at any time of the year and students to not have to wait for term time. Students can more or less take as much time as they like or need to complete particular courses – for our students with disability or those caring for others, we build in study breaks throughout the course to allow them to put their studies aside for a week, month or whatever without the student feeling guilty. Not everyone can start and work through a course with no interruptions in their life and NEC courses are modularised to make it easy to have breaks. Some students like to study alone, others prefer to meet in groups and this can be arranged in outreach venues or in schools and colleges. NEC is working with excluded pupils in Kingston and the children work at home and meet once a week at a youth centre with their tutor to have a group session and compare notes.
For school age children, they can use NEC course material and work at it in the class to which they have been assigned and this relieves stress on the classroom teacher who may be trying to run a parallel curriculum with the class and with traveller children. If the children also use an NEC tutor to mark and set their work, this also relieves pressure on the classroom teacher. This is particularly suitable if the school or college cannot offer a teacher in a particular subject at that time. NEC offers a full student record, with details of courses taken and achievement and this can be portable, going with the student as they change schools and accessible, with permission from the student, by their new teachers. For stability, the student can stay with the same NEC distance tutor as they move from school to school and for those needing additional support, NEC can also arrange for a mentor to remain in contact with them over time.
Because students learn in different ways, most NEC courses are available in a variety of formats. Most of NEC’s students like to have paper-based modules, either workbooks or loose leaf in a binder. However, NEC can also make material available as downloadable from the net, or on a CD rom. Some courses come with videos relating to the teaching material, for example on catering and construction. NEC uses mainstream BBC material by arrangement ( A Taste of the Sea is currently being used for literacy work in a catering context).
NEC systems are also of use to professionals. All courses are available as resources for teachers or educational organisers, and this can allow teachers to use NEC material instead of having to prepare their own. Traveller support workers can use courses with or without NEC tutors for groups that they are working with – non-teachers could use the creative writing course, for example, if doing a traveller history project. If a support worker is negotiating on behalf of travellers with schools, NEC can be extremely useful since it can provide pre-packaged courses, deal with numbers of students from one upwards, and can even provide the teacher if the school has teaching gaps. The fact that the child may already be working through an NEC course is also helpful in showing the school the current level the child is working at.
NEC can arrange access to this wide range of mainstream subjects but it also works in partnership with systems such as traveller co-ordination, support and education. This enables the adaptation of material and even the production of appropriate material that would be of more interest to travellers. Clearly, the aim of NEC is not to offer a parallel system. Despite saying that NEC offers a very wide range, we do not want to let mainstream education off the hook. The way that schools and colleges behave in relation to travellers is a good test of what sort of institution they are. The very best will be able to offer travellers, including adults, all that they will ever want or need. The reality is that they struggle at times to reach the goal of offering a comparable educational experience. The reality remains that mainstream educational systems by their very nature are mass systems that cope less well with the unusual of any kind, and in practice traveller support workers are always likely to need the sort of gap filling that an organisation like NEC can provide. If traveller education services have high aspirations, if they seek to ensure that travellers can access the same range of educational opportunity that others have, then they will welcome the additional support and help that NEC and others can provide.