The Traveller Education Service has no responsibility for maintaining distance learning programmes, but encourages schools to meet these needs, for Traveller and Fairground children. School records may now be held by parents through a national 'green card' system. Formal statements of educational need can also be passed across county borders, but need not necessarily be adopted by the receiving county. This is recognised as a national problem, and a conference on this issue was held earlier in the year in Oxford. Additional home visits are provided in Cambridgeshire to encourage secondary enrolment, and some areas have a high transfer of children from primary to secondary level.
Drug use is thought to be an emerging problem with the secondary age group.
The quality of education offered is considered to have been inferior, and breached the DFEE advice that separate provision was discriminatory. However Traveller parents reportedly approved of the separation. This also applies to many other rural pupils. Several attempts have been made to provide transport for Traveller pupils outside these guidelines, as an incentive for secondary school attendance, but this has not produced sustainable results, and has proved too expensive to maintain. Prosecutions are expensive and are used as a last resort, where support and encouragement has failed.