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FUNDING IS TO be rolled out to help close the gap in higher education for Traveller and Roma students.
The announcement comes today from Minister for Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science Simon Harris TD. The said that €450,000 in funding will be used specifically to assist Travellers and Roma students in higher education.
Some of the money will be used for bursaries for students.
The investment was secured through the Dormant Accounts Funds to ensure that COVID-19 did not widen the already significant gap in higher education between Travellers and the wider population, his department said.
Speaking today, Minister Harris said: “Participation by Travellers in higher education remains at an alarming low level and recent data shows just 61 Travellers in higher education. Only 1% of Travellers have a third level education.”
We have a significant way to go to improving participation rates among the Traveller and Roma community but it will also offer additional supports to people already in Higher Education.
He added that there is a “real risk that the small increases we have seen in recent years could be lost as a result of COVID-19″, and this is something his Department is determined to mitigate against.
“This funding marks a 50% increase in the funding secured in 2021,” he said. “It will have transformative long-term benefits for the Traveller and Roma communities and allow third level institutions broaden their reach people in these marginalised communities.”
The key objectives of the fund will be:
Dr Alan Wall, Chief Executive of the HEA, said that the HEA welcomed the news. He said that the impact of COVID-19 “continues to exacerbate the challenges faced by Traveller and Roma students when accessing, and participating in, higher education”.
The continuation of this Fund, and its expansion to include Roma students, is an important intervention that will help achieve a more ethnically diverse student body.
The funding measure is in addition to those already in place to support the Action Plan for Increasing Traveller participation in Higher Education 2019-2021.
The funding will enable the building of an interagency community approach led by higher education institutions, in collaboration with local Traveller and Roma organisations. Harris’s department said it “will have transformative long-term benefits for the Traveller and Roma communities”.
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Because I have to get up and go to work everyday to earn a living and make ends meet, I have never been afforded the opportunity to be given a grant for further education, you have to become unemployed and get social welfare to take up a place for free courses and be placed in a job thereafter. It’s always the people who get benefits from the state are afforded the best opportunity’s and funded by those of us who can’t afford to give up work!
@et: no you don’t. It’s remarkably easy to get a grant for college in Ireland. So don’t tell lies.
@Gavin Minihane: It’s remarkably easy to get a grant for college in Ireland if you are unemployed and get social welfare. So he’s not telling lies.
@Gavin Minihane: not if you are working, you don’t qualify and I do speak from experience. So he’s statement is true.
@Gavin Minihane: it seems that you are remarkably full of lies.
@Gavin Minihane: No it is not easy. Not even for all on social welfare payments. I tried several routes. As a family carer living at home and looking after my father, I was blocked at every turn for financial help, even for the amount of hours I could study. They say it is 18.5 hours as a carer but that includes homework when I am available if needed, travel time, and even lunch breaks, which significantly cuts down on potential courses. Eventually my family stepped in to fund me. Not everyone is so lucky.
@et: Springboard courses are funded 90% by the government for employed people.
@Dan Moran: Lol
@et: do you begrudge those young people help in breaking out of the societal constraints they were born into? I think its about time. Any kid who wants to work hard and make a life for themselves deserves a leg up. My father ran a business and was comfortable so I got no grant. I didn’t need it. That’s how it works.
@Jim Buckley Barrett: adults don’t qualify if working but kids still qualify if their parents work. It’s means tested. If you earn over a certain threshold they won’t qualify. If we had better management of the country’s pot (like some of the Nordic countries) all students would qualify but that’s a whole other discussion.
@et: giving the unemployed the opportunity to an education benefits society in the long wrong!…..
If that’s how you feel, give up your job and join the social welfare que then
@Siobhan Rosemary: long run!
@et: look at springboard. I did a level 9 in risk management and doing level 8 in AI now. Only pay 10% of fee and the job sorted that for me. Free education.
@et: You are looking in the wrong places for the funding. firstly springboardcourses.ie have funded courses up to 90% for people in employment and secondly you can claim take back against you fees if in employment so that is a grant of sorts. If you want to do it badly enough, you will find a way. I say this having worked THREE jobs to fund my masters.
@et: the household income threshold ranges from €24k to €64k for full time courses which are covered by the SUSI grant. The grants are for full time study only so you would have to give up work or at least reduce your hours anyway (this brings down your reckonable income) these thresholds are for working families. Anyone on benefits receives BTEA which is a different grant.
They are designed to give low income families an opportunity for education. These people who you dismiss as benefit scroungers will then become tax payers or higher tax payers and help fund the education for those that come after. This is better for society and the economy.
For workers earning more than the threshold there are other options such as negotiating the cost of further education with your employer or doing something radical like saving for it, doing a springboard course or many of the other short term courses that are partially funded by the HEA.
What you are advocating for is taxpaers should also fund the further education of someone with a household income of more than €54k ( less than 4 dependants ) https://susi.ie/undergraduate-income-thresholds-and-grant-award-rates-academic-year-2021-22/
Where is the line? Do you then give out that you’re paying tax to educate someone who is on a higher income than you?
Do we not offer support to low income families at all?
Do we not offer support to people to upskill after they have lost their jobs or been unemployed?
There are of course always going to be gaps in the system but in the grand scheme of things further education is incredibly cheap here and there are lots of opportunities and schemes available to people who want to upskill be it through your employer or government funding.
@Jim Buckley Barrett: these are the thresholds for household income for a susi grant.
If someone is unemployed they get BTEA which is a different scheme. SUSI is for working families.
Your statement is untrue
https://susi.ie/undergraduate-income-thresholds-and-grant-award-rates-academic-year-2021-22/
Just a point I want to make. What about Equality that the Travelling and Roma Ethnic groups are looking for. Yet they get special treatment and more grants? How is that Equality.
Yes I work as does my wife pay mortgage, bills, doctor, health insurance. Taxes and the increasing cost of living does not help and I pay 6k a year so my daughters go to college. I actually can’t save don’t have all the sky channels etc don’t go out but I’m treated differently because I work..
Think I’ll buy a mobile home and pack up my life on it get more.
Rant over
@James Johnson: there’s a whole raft of reading on this issue if you’re interested in it. Positive discrimination. These measures are often required in the short term to even the playing field for marginalised groups. I say short term but it often takes at least a generation to affect real change where there have been countless generations of social and institutional discrimination.
@James Johnson: the Traveller Community and Roma experience discrimination on a daily basis, something you don’t have to worry about.
@James Johnson: You don’t have all the Sky channels?? Will somebody please start up a Go Fund Me for this poor, deprived man! That must be tough going alright.
@James Johnson: enjoy the mobile home, dont forget the planning laws etc so you will find it difficult to park it for longer than 10 days but enjoy it!! I think what you are confusing as special treatment is actually equal opportunities. Everyone loves to moan about the travellers or roma community and insinuate they are drains on society etc., then when the gov make a plan to give them opportunities for education and employment…. everyone loves to moan too!! Best of luck to anyone who accesses education throu this route and changes the curve.
@James Johnson: if you leave now and run real fast you may be able to catch up with the point that just flew over your head.
Keep them in school first.
@Mary Nugent: That would be brilliant but some traveller and roma children as young as 4 years feel unwelcome in schools. Do you think this makes them happy with their school experience and jumping out of bed to go? We need to support the kids who want an education, and show the benefits through the improvement in their lives and their children’s lives.
Let’s hope they make good use of the funds.
@Dave Johnston: But is that really the case or do the circumstances in which they find themselves dictate the direction of their lives, the opportunities or lack there of available to them?
For generations the perceptions around the majority of Irish people was, that they were only fit for digging and road building because they lacked the intellectual capacity to rise above their station in life, unlike the children of the wealthy, however access to education has allowed the majority of irish people the opportunity to shine intellectually and expand their potential opportunities in life and the path is a little easier for each generation.
Travellers have a lot of negative press and perceptions around them, with a lot of it justified, but they too are victims of their own circumstances.
@David Van-Standen: no, no one in society thinks they are “only fit” for what you stated. The challenge is encouraging parents to persuade their children to actually complete second level education. What’s the point in providing funding for third level education when the statistics show the percentage completely second level education is atrocious?
@Dave Johnston: Id hazard a guess that you don’t actually know the majority or what their feelings on higher education are. Do you have actual information on this or are you making this assumption about a whole generation of young members of the travelling community based on your limited interaction with a handful of travellers? Seriously. Ask yourself that question. It’s a nuanced issue. Perhaps if more young travellers see their peers going to college they’ll realise this route is actually open to them. I think its a fantastic initiative.
@Disco Inferno: No, the challenge is for all people in the travelling community to see a way that education will actually lead them into a better future and that is not a traveller problem its a societal problem, because even with education, more doors are closed to them than are opened, because they are travellers.
Some other people in Ireland experience this to an extent, if they live in what are determined to be problem areas, they are not offered employment and often have to give an different address or move to even be offered a job, for travellers there is no change of address from being a traveller, the negative perceptions follow them.
If society pushes people to the fringes or excludes them from full participation, they end up making their own way with the available options.
To offer mental health support? You need more than 450k
@Johannes Baader: agreed mental health needs far more funding than what’s on offer here.
Most of the funding will be spent on female participation. Their menfolk do not embrace training/ education. There should be an equitable spend on the gender mix.
@Irish big fellow: no it showed spent on who whats to study not based on gender or any other metric.
@Irish big fellow: You’re absolutely right. It’s seems that Traveler mothers are doing their best to educate their daughters. I see the girls getting on the school bus from our local halting site, but not the boys. I see young Traveler women attending youthreach courses to get their Leaving Certs. The young boys just hang around the area and tend horses with the other menfolk. I think there’s a ‘I never went to school and it didn’t do me any harm’ perception with the men. These are only my observations, as I live very close to a halting site.
And if the full amount of that fund isn’t used what happens it?
have your say