The study was carried out by the School of Education at University College Cork (UCC) and the Cork Traveller Education Unit. They found that exclusion and discrimination against Travellers is more common in post-primary schools.
“This report provides insight into how Traveller young people are navigating the everyday realities of post-primary school life,” lead researcher Professor Nicola Ingram. “For too many, school is experienced as a hostile place of hurt and pain, marked by negative interactions and exclusionary practices. Our research finds ethnic segregation and restrictions on social connection can deepen feelings of isolation, loneliness and disengagement from education," she continued.
Twenty nine individuals took part in the study.
National statistics state that only 27% of Travellers finish post-primary school education, this is compared to 97% of the wider population.
The study identified that Traveller students are subjected to increased discrimination and felt explicit segregation from settled students in school. The study concludes that this is the reason there are such low numbers of Travellers finishing education compared to settled students.
One of the individuals taking part in the study said: "I get taken out for like basically every class. So… I don't really know what’s going on in class because I’m mainly taken out…The boredom and all that. I don’t like it. It makes me just want to leave."
"Like from the start, I was told I was mixing with the wrong group and then they won’t allow us to sit together and they try and move us apart from each other," another individual said.
The study also found that Traveller students feel as if they are policed more than their peers, one individual said: "Like with me when I go into school, I hang around with my cousins and my family. So then, by doing that then, you’re just classed as trouble… even when you’re not doing anything, like, could be just chatting, like, you’re just classed as trouble by your demeanour, just by chatting and by knowing who you are."
The study suggests to create stronger supports for students moving from primary to post-primary school, monitoring to prevent ethnic segregation in school and make education on the experience of young Traveller people mandatory.
