This week MSPs were told that the Gypsy Traveller community in Scotland deserves an apology from the Scottish government for historical injustices.
Davie Donaldson, a Scottish Traveller and campaigner, told MSPs on Tuesday that the government should apologise for the “forced separation and forced sedentarisation” of Gypsy Traveller people.
Between 1940 and 1980, they heard, the so-called “tinker experiment”, supported by councils and the UK government, attempted to strip away the nomadic lifestyle of the community, providing rudimentary and often cramped huts for people to live in. When families became too big to be housed in the huts, children would sometimes be taken away.
Coincidentally, a few days previously, I had been trawling through a host of education data published by the Scottish government - and one statistic jumped out at me. Amid all the school exclusion statistics corralled into an Excel spreadsheet, Table 1.10 - “Exclusions by ethnic background of pupils, 2020-21” - contained one of those shocking figures that hit you in the gut.
The exclusion rate for pupils recorded as “White - Gypsy/Traveller” was 25.8 per 1,000. This was compared with 13.1 for “White - Scottish” and 10.6 for “White - Other British”. The overall exclusion rate in 2020-21 was 11.9.
That figure was drawn from a low base - amounting to 37 exclusions among 24 White - Gypsy/Traveller pupils - but it tallies with concerns that have been raised in the past.
In 2017, we reported on University of Edinburgh research that suggested pupils from Gypsy and Traveller backgrounds often feared for their safety in school and sometimes dropped out as a result, owing to “self-segregation”. Dr Geetha Marcus found “growing evidence” that Gypsy Traveller pupils suffered “persistently high levels of bullying in schools”.
In July 2021, we reported that Audit Scotland had been “critical of the return on the investment in closing the poverty-related attainment gap”, with particular concerns around certain groups. Education outcomes, the commission stated, were “particularly poor for care-experienced young people, Gypsy/Travellers and white Scottish/UK boys”.
The Scottish government, in policy documents, uses the term “Gypsy/Travellers” to refer to distinct groups such as Roma, Romany Gypsies, Scottish and Irish Travellers “who consider the travelling lifestyle part of their ethnic identity”.
It was sufficiently concerned about these communities that, in October 2019, with local government body Cosla, it published the document “Improving the Lives of Gypsy/Travellers”, with a focus on providing more and better accommodation for Gypsy Travellers.
It has also previously acknowledged this: “Young Gypsy/Travellers’ educational outcomes are among the worst in Scottish education. We know that school attendance rates are the lowest of any ethnic group and exclusion rates are the highest, and that many Gypsy/Traveller children do not make the transition from primary to secondary school.”
The government has also noted that: “Concerns over bullying and harassment have been given as one of the reasons preventing children from Gypsy/Traveller communities attending school.”
Through the Scottish Traveller Education Review Group (STERG), the government says it took action by publishing the guidance Improving educational outcomes for children and young people from travelling cultures in December 2018.
And yet, despite repeated calls made in recent years for an apology for injustices faced by these communities, there has not been one from the Scottish government.
Addressing the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee on Tuesday, Mr Donaldson said: “I just hope that in 2022…this will be the year that the government will strongly consider making an apology, [and] strongly consider recognising the impact of cultural trauma on today’s inequalities and tell Scotland’s Gypsy Traveller story in full.”
In 2016, I travelled to Italy for a project highlighting the prejudice and injustice faced by the Roma people - now and in atrocities of the past - where campaigners told me their hopes that education would provide a way forward.
As with any issue, education alone cannot drive social progress - but it can at least seek to improve its frequently inglorious track record with some of the most marginalised communities in Scotland.
Henry Hepburn is Scotland editor at Tes. He tweets @Henry_Hepburn
