LAST UPDATE | 11 Nov 2021

“I FEEL THAT the schools have been failed, the children have been failed, we’re all failing as professionals and people are afraid to put their hands up and admit it.”

Anne Marie Quilligan – a social care worker for the Tipperary Rural Traveller Project - works with over 100 school children throughout Munster but said only a handful will go on to further education “because they don’t have the basic reading and writing skills”.

This forms part of the recent TOUGH START investigation by Noteworthy and The Journal which revealed poor outcomes and lack of supports for Traveller children across the multiple State systems and policy areas.

Part of this project examined the education system and found that Traveller children are routinely put on ‘reduced hours’ at school – with at least one student on just 40 minutes a day.

This week, as a bonus episode of The Explainer brought to you by our investigative platform Noteworthy, Susan Daly chats with reporter Maria Delaney and Anne Marie Quilligan about the findings of the investigation.

https://soundcloud.com/the-explainer-podcast/by-noteworthy-why-are-the-school-days-of-traveller-children-being-reduced?si=61f92dfe2da94d4f80b7a834f706e972

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• Home by 10am: ‘Misuse’ of reduced school days leaving a generation of Traveller children ‘lost’

This episode was put together by Susan Daly, Maria Delaney and producer Laura Byrne.