Roma children are amongst some of the lowest educationally achieving children in the UK. This is in spite of the setting up of a Traveller Education Service in every Local Education Authority, the government DSEF (2003) Raising Achievement initiatives and the more recent DCSF Guidance on the Education of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children (2008) as well as an abundance of school based initiatives and anti-discriminatory law. Our paper is drawn from the work we are doing as part of a Comenius Inservice Education and Training project with teachers and Roma families across eight EU countries. The two schools where we have been working are primary schools situated close by each other in a disadvantaged area in a major city in the North East of England. The Roma are relatively new to the school and local community. Although the school populations are similar the two primary schools are in many ways very different. However, some of the issues facing the teachers in working with Roma children are shared. In the paper we aim to explore a range of issues facing the teachers of Roma children and the issues facing the Roma children themselves on coming to primary school in the North East of England. In particular we discuss issues around teacher perceptions and constructions of the Roma children and their families;  cultural (mis) conceptions; identitification and disidentification amongst the Roma families and the implications of this for the education of the children, together with the impact of the work we have been doing with the teachers in relation to perceptions of the children’s school experience and the school-home relationships. The data sources we draw on include semi-structured interviews with teachers and children and field journals.