Roma communities, understood as “one of the most marginalized communities on the continent of Europe” (OECD, 2020, p. 21) routinely experience “chronic inequality” (Abad-Merino et al, 2024, p. 594) in education. Included among the myriad of systemic and institutional drivers of such educational experiences are “the education system structure of individual countries, discriminatory policies, anti-Roma perspective and lack of professional development in cultural (Kurum Tiryakioglu and Bulbul, 2024, p. 1). In the context of Europe, efforts have been made by the European Union, Council of Europe, and the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination to support the rights of individuals in the Roma community. In the context of formal education, one of the more successful initiatives to target inequality has been the provision of Roma Cultural Mediators. Liddicoat (2016) describes cultural mediation as “a relational and interpretive activity” (p. 355) that demands a capacity to interpret and comprehend the complex relationship between two parties. The ROMED programme, established by the Council of Europe in 2011 to train Roma mediators, has worked to promote effective intercultural mediation to improve the communication and co-operation between Roma and public institutions and operate on that basis of “individuals with a Roma background, from local Roma communities or with a good knowledge of Roma issues” acting as mediators between members of Roma communities and public institutions” (Kyuchukov, 2012). This paper is based on a funded research project which set out to assess the impact of cultural mediation support on the attendance and engagement of children from the Roma community in a selection of primary and secondary schools in Dublin, Ireland. While very little research data are available on the educational experiences of the Roma community in Ireland, a recent contribution by Kennedy and Smith (2019) laid bare the “very real obstacles faced by Roma pupils in Ireland”, including those caused by communication problems and cultural and language barriers. A recent evaluation of the work of the Dublin 1&7 School Completion Programme (SCP) (Mc Daid, Share and Lolich, 2023) found significant concern among staff in schools, community agencies and the SCP in relation to levels of attendance and engagement by Roma pupils enrolled in their school. These issues were exacerbated by the switch to online learning due to Covid 19 and the housing crisis within their catchment areas which means that some pupils have a long commute to school. A multimethods approach was employed to generated data with a range of stakeholder, including Roma children and their families, school staff, support staff and the cultural mediator. Key findings indicate overwhelming positivity towards the work of the cultural mediator among all stakeholders. The work of the CM was particularly valuable at points of transitions in the educational journeys of many Roma children. Observations in respect of terms of employment and understanding about limitations of role cast an important light on the work of the CM and the sustainability of this particular approach to the provision of support, through a particular state agency.

A multimethods approach was undertaken with a variety of stakeholders in this evaluation of the provision of cultural mediation support in a variety of primary and secondary schools in Dublin, Ireland. A series of conversational workshops were held with students in both the primary and secondary schools, involving semi-structured and unstructured interviews. Interviews and observations were conducted with Roma parents, at key times in their interface with the schools. The CM acted as a co-researcher for the interviews with both the Roma parents and some of the children who preferred to speak in Romanian. Interviews were held with a variety of school staff, ranging from school principals to class teachers and support teachers. A series of interviews were held with the Cultural Mediator. Inductive thematic analysis was undertaken that was based on three phases: Initial coding, focussed coding and theme generation. Following the initial coding which was undertaken on a line-by-line basis of the transcribed data, focused coding involved the identification of more significant codes that explained larger sections of the data. The analysts collapsed a series of these initial codes into more focused codes. These focused codes were discussed with the CM and analyses were further refined to pay attention to the organisation and management of the services provided. The final phase involved a further round of grouping these focused codes into broader thematic areas that spoke to the research question. These themes include: the importance of attendance; the importance of early intervention; supports for transition and sustainability of the provision of support.

Four key themes were generated through analysis of the data. The first theme, the importance of attendance, focusses on the views on attendance from the perspective of all stakeholders, with a clear appreciation of the importance attributed to attending school. The CM is seen to play a key role by both the Roma children and their families in supporting on going attendance, while the school staff explain that the CM plays a vital role in supporting Roma children to attend their school. The second theme focusses on the importance placed on early intervention, wherein a major emphasis is placed on working with families with young children and those young children themselves as they engage with school. Thirdly, the area of support around points of educational transition were deemed important in supporting ongoing attendance and engagement with school. Frequently identified as pressure points, the support provided by the CM helped to alleviate some of the potential for fall-off in attendance in a new school, or at a new point in time in school. Finally, despite the clear evidence of the significant contribution made by the CM in supporting the attendance and engagement of the Roma children in the schools in question, the sustainability of the supports provided was challenged by a range of organisational and structural factors related to the employment conditions of the CM. The implications of these findings both for the local project, but also in terms of learnings for similar work in schools and education systems across Europe will be teased out.

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