Education: Gypsy, Roma and Traveller Children

Lord Boswell of Aynho Excerpts

Wednesday 4th May 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hill of Oareford]

I clearly accept the noble Baroness’s first point—that if children, wherever they come from, stay on at school and do well there, they are more likely to do better thereafter. As for the education maintenance allowance, one issue that we have with Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children is that half of them are dropping out well before they would be entitled to claim EMA. As I have said before, there is a complex of difficult issues to which there does not appear to be a simple answer; if there were a simple answer, I know that the approaches that were in place under a previous Government would have worked in delivering improvements. Sadly, despite the best efforts of all sorts of people, including local authorities, central government and everyone else, with all the tools that they used, that did not appear to work.

[Lord Boswell of Aynho]

My Lords, the Minister has already referred to a large number of the matters that have concerned those of us who have taken an interest in this area, including the high level of exclusions. I might add to the pot the concern about current implications of a large-scale eviction, which can of course threaten the viability of an individual school as well as the pupils’ education. Would he or his department be amenable to receiving representations from across the House to try to get to the bottom of some of these issues and to have a more informed and extended discussion on what are clearly complex issues?