Monday

Saturday, spoke at the AGM of the Advisory Council for the Education of Romanies and Travellers (ACERT), of which I have been President for some years. The Government's policy is to abandon special measures to bring the GRT community up to the level of the national average, and in particular to allow local authorities to run down the Traveller Education Service. We do have a meeting scheduled with the Minister, Nick Gibb MP, and it will be interesting to see how he reconciles the gross educational under-achievement of Traveller children with the Coalition Programme in which we promised additional resources for disadvantaged children.