Education programmes to help support Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils have been launched by the Communities Minister, Lord Greenhalgh, today (22 July 2021).

The new programmes will focus on boosting educational attainment, tackling exclusion and drop-out rates and improving pathways to employment for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children, backed by £1 million government funding.

The pilot programmes will reach 150 schools and involve a range of targeted work, including:

• reducing drop-out rates by engaging families with pre-school children and those transitioning from primary to secondary school,
• targeting young people not in education, employment or training,
• fostering better cooperation between councils, schools and families and
• tutoring for catch-up lessons to support pupils whose education has been disrupted by the pandemic.

Bradford, Central Bedfordshire, Essex, Hillingdon and Surrey have been chosen as the pilot areas, with the programmes informing future government work that make a real difference to the lives of people in the community.

Communities Minister Lord Greenhalgh said:

Access to education is absolutely key to improving the life chances of all children.

Our £1 million education programme will reach over 600 children and young people in areas across the country.

This work will help ensure no community is left behind in the government’s drive to level up the nation.

Today’s announcement includes funding for the Open Doors Education and Training organisation to continue catch-up tutoring for Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils, building on £400,000 invested last year to deliver catch-up support and expert guidance to help young people progress.

This funding complements the significant investment that Department for Education has made of over £3 billion for education recovery, including a significant expansion of its tutoring programme to support children and young people to make up for learning lost during the pandemic.

Further information

The pilot areas were chosen as those with the highest number of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller pupils attending primary and/or secondary school, according to data from the DfE 2020 National Pupil Database.

The Department for Education announcement in June included £1 billion for a national tutoring revolution, made up of:

• £218 million of new funding directed through the government’s flagship National Tutoring Programme. This is on top of the £215 million funding already planned to be invested in the 2021-22 academic year;
• £579 million to fund schools to develop local tutoring provision using new or existing school staff; and
• £222 million to fund an extension to the existing 16-19 Tuition Fund for two further years.

The Department for Education will continue to ensure that support reaches disadvantaged pupils and will work with their delivery partner, Randstad, to ensure that a minimum of 65% of Tuition Partner provision will be provided to pupils eligible for the pupil premium.

This new tutoring funding, combined with the funding for tutoring they have already announced, will allow the Department for Education to provide up to 100 million tutoring hours for children and young people across England by 2024. By phase, this funding enables provision of:

• Up to 6 million tutoring courses of 15 hours of tutoring for 5-16 year olds by 2024.
• The equivalent of 2 million 15-hour courses for 16-19 year olds by 2024