I found it tough being a gipsy at school but now I’m helping others learn

8:12am Tuesday 27th May 2008

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DURING her first few years in the education system Kathleen Jones would spend, on average, just two or three days a week in school. She didn't enjoy the daily routine and felt isolated and outcast because she was a gipsy.

And she was not alone. Many parents of traveller children fear education will erode their cultural values. Nationally, only about 10 per cent of traveller children attend secondary school.

But despite Kathleen's rocky start to school life, she has gone on to become a teaching assistant, helping children from the travelling community to integrate into school, teaching her own community about the importance of education, and enlightening the non-travelling community about gIpsies.

Kathleen, aged 18, said: "People have a lot of misconceptions about gipsies and travellers. I think it's time the travelling and non-travelling communities learnt a little bit more about each other's cultures and learnt to live in harmony."

Kathleen lives on an established gipsy and traveller site, off Sandy Lane, Stourport-upon-Severn.

She said: "We have had a pitch on the site all of my life, although for the first six years of my life we were travelling up and down Wales, as this is where my family are from."

At the age of six, Kathleen's family moved on to the Sandy Lane site permanently, where they now live alongside more than 20 families.

She started school, but it was a challenging experience, as she remembers.

"I remember first school fondly. The headteacher was very encouraging and I enjoyed going to school. But when I moved to middle school, it was completely different."

She said she felt uncomfortable at the school and believed she was singled out for being a gipsy.

She added: "It got to the point where I was only attending two or three days a week.

"It was my choice not to go, but looking back now, I do think it affected my education. I missed out on a lot of learning."

Kathleen eventually joined Stourport High School, where she thrived, completing six GCSEs and taking a BTEC course in catering and hospitality.

She said: "My brother Reuben was already at the school when I started and I remember asking him what it was like. I didn't want to end up somewhere like the middle school. But he said it was OK and everyone was friendly."

Stourport High School has a high proportion of gipsy and traveller children and has worked hard to ensure they are fully integrated into the school.

Kathleen said: "Because there were lots of other gipsy and traveller children at the school I felt more comfortable. And once I got used to it I thought it was great. I really enjoyed going to school. The teachers were great and didn't treat me any differently, and I made lots of friends, both from within the travelling community and outside."

After sitting her GCSEs Kathleen stayed on at the school into the sixth form and began helping out at the school as a teaching assistant.

"It all started when I was helping one of the younger travelling children one day, who was having problems," she said.

"One of the other teaching assistants said I should consider becoming one. I'd never really thought about it and I remember saying. Could I do that?' I had never believed I could do anything like it."

After speaking to the school's headteacher, Liz Quinn, the two struck a deal - Kathleen would continue her education, and in return she would be rewarded with a position as a teaching assistant.

Today, Kathleen is the key link between the school and the travelling community. She said: "I love my job. I'm the point of call for the gipsy and travelling children at the school when they join and I encourage them to get stuck in."

Kathleen also spends time educating parents in her own community about the need to send their children to school and building relationships between them and non-travellers.

Recently she has been involved in a special project at the school, to explore her cultural history.

Deputy headteacher Ceri Owens said: "Throughout history gipsies and travellers have been persecuted. Just as the Jewish community has raised the profile of its history, the gipsy community is doing the same.

"We have been working on a project with the police, church, housing sector and local authority to educate people about gipsies and travellers, and Kathleen has been a major part of this."

As part of the project a special booklet, called The Forgotten Minority, has been produced.

The project also includes a special exhibition of gipsy and traveller history at the County Museum in Hartlebury on Sunday, June 15, and sees pupils at Stourport High School taught about the gipsy and traveller community, including learning some Romany.

"Kathleen even arranged for a large group of staff and pupils to visit the site where she lives and speak to the gipsies and travellers direct," Mr Owens said.

"I am very proud of my gipsy roots," Kathleen said. "And to work on a project where I can share that with other people is great."

She added: "When people think of gipsies or travellers they think we are all dirty, messy and thieves. But just because there is a small minority that do go around leaving mess, something I and my family, and all the gypsies and travellers I know, condemn as well, then people should not tar us all with the same brush.

"All people in the non-travelling community are not the same, so why should people think that we are?"

Kathleen is an inspirational young woman and a positive role model for today's young - whether from the travelling community or not.

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