Pavee Point’s Hilary Harmon held a workshop at INTO’s conference to review DEIS – Poverty and Social Inclusion in Education at the week-end.
Hilary presented a workshop ‘Ensuring Inclusion: The challenges for Traveller and Roma children in Education’ and highlighted the role that ethnic data can play in improving educational outcomes for all children including Travellers and Roma. She also said that given that the Roma and Traveller populations in Ireland are relatively small, children from these families can be particularly vulnerable and isolated in Education, needing additional supports which are not adequately supplied.
There is a notable absence of Traveller and Roma culture in the curriculum, preventing students in the majority population from understanding and appreciating Travellers and Roma, and allowing prejudices and stereotypes to multiply.
A focus on the importance of ethnic data collection is part of a broader Pavee Point project ‘Counting Us In’ which promotes an ethnic identifier in all official data collection: http://www.paveepoint.ie/project/ethnic-data-monitoring-initiative/
The INTO conference also looked at multi-disciplinary teams, a strategy for hunger prevention in schools and an integrated approach to child outcomes in Dublin 17. Further information at: http://www.into.ie/ROI/NewsEvents/Conferences/ConferenceonEducationalDisadvantage2015/