Slovak Roma Village of Origin and Educational Outcomes: A Critical Evaluation

The immigration of relatively large numbers of Slovak Roma people to Sheffield since 2004 has highlighted some tensions around the settling of the new arrivals into the complex social, linguistic and cultural spaces of this diverse city. Schools have faced particular challenges welcoming the new children who manifest various issues in relation to their language competencies, prior educational experiences, truncated schooling and often lived experiences of social deprivation and marginalization. Based on data from an ongoing ethnographic study and drawing on Bronfenbrenner’s (2005) ‘Process-Person-Context-Time’ (PPCT) framework, this paper presents the context of the two main sender villages of the Roma in Sheffield and forefronts some of the experiences of Slovak Roma children in secondary school as they negotiate prevailing English-only language ideologies and complex curriculum challenges. Findings show that, whilst the Roma pupils are making some headway in terms of school integration, they are often finding academic attainment a step too far, particularly in terms of formal educational outcomes. Furthermore, an analysis of educational attainment data by village of origin raises questions of contextual impacts on educational achievement.