Gypsy Children Blamed for School's Failure

Many readers of The Sun's article entitled "Gypsies Ruined Our Kids' School" might have started nodding their heads before they'd even read it. It starts predictably enough:

“The whole place was lovely — it was like The Darling Buds Of May, a real chocolate-box village.

“Now the travellers have ruined the school and the community.”

If they bothered to read on, though, they'd have noticed something strange about the piece. Yes, it blames Travellers for the problems at Crays Hill Primary School. But it also gives the game away about what really happened here. 

“Before the travellers arrived, the school was full, with about 200 pupils. Now there are only 50", the article says. The numbers of children and staff at the school began to plummet. Why did this happen?

The article offers an answer, “When the traveller children joined the school, many were illiterate ... Parents felt their children were being held back and started taking them out of school."

So there we are.

Children with specific learning needs enrolled at this school: it happens all the time. But in this case, the majority of parents and teachers decided to pull out for fear that the other children would be affected.

You can make up your own mind whether that's a fair response.

So why did The Sun think it was okay to publish an article like this? Racism and discrimination have been banned in the media, and rightly so. Like every other newspaper, The Sun has to abide by this.

England's Gypsy and Irish Traveller communities have been recognised as ethnic minorities for years. Shouldn't they get the same fair treatment as other ethnic communities?

I think it's only fair that they should. I think most of us agree. If the article had been called "Pakistanis Ruined Our Kids' School", or "Jews Ruined Our Kids' School", there would have been a public outcry, and a good thing too.

It might be too early to say. But I'm guessing there'll be no such outcry about this piece.

And that should make us all think pretty hard about what's going on in our schools, media and government today.