ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an account of the development and structure of Junior Training Centres - the operational correlative of official discourse on second-level schooling for Travellers. Their history highlights the conceptual, structural and operational freedoms and difficulties which continue to characterise them. The chapter describes the field work setting and discussion of aspects of school organisation and practice. It deals with an examination of St Donat's ‘Statement of Aims’. Education providers were very concerned about the fact that Travellers left school at age 12 and did not attend any form of educational institution until they could enrol in a pre-employment Training Centre at age 16. Each Junior Training Centre for Travellers was free to develop its own curriculum, but in fact most offered roughly the same programme. All concentrated on teaching functional literacy and numeracy, and religion.
