Together with Migrant Children, Public Law Project and Garden Court Chambers have been awarded funding by the Strategic Legal Fund (SLF) for a joint project to look at the issue of delays in accessing education for asylum seeking children in NASS accommodation.
This project is looking at;
The experiences of organisations who advocate for asylum seeking children.
The experiences of children and the impact of delays starting school on their wellbeing and development.
The trend of education delays and school place availability in the context of NASS accommodation.
We are currently seeking the views of organisations who work with asylum seeking children on their experiences of securing school places for them. If you have data and experiences to share, please clink the link below to access the survey.
If you are a young person or parent who have experienced delays to securing a school place and would like to talk to us about it and share your experiences, you can email us - casework@togethermigrantchildren.org.uk
The issue of delay securing school places for children in asylum accommodation
From our own casework, we frequently deal with children who experience delays in accessing school places, when placed in asylum support accommodation. We have experienced delays of over 8 weeks in some places waiting on school places where there are large concentrations of asylum support accommodation, or where interim accommodation (hotels) have been put at short notice across the country. One of the key difficulties we are experiencing is when children are dispersed, which often results in needing to change schools.
At the same time, there has been extensive coverage over the past 12 months of the excess of school places in some areas, with some schools facing closure as a result of a lack of pupils.
The allocation of asylum accommodation policy says about requests to stay in area on the basis of education;
Requests for accommodation in a particular location because the individual’s children are attending school in the area should normally be refused, as arrangements can be made to transfer the children to a school in another area.
However, accommodation may temporarily be arranged in the area requested if the child has started their final school or college year leading up to their GCSE, Scottish Highers, AS or A-level exams (or their equivalents), provided they have been enrolled at that school for a significant part of the previous school year.
Individuals will not benefit from this concession if they have previously been uncooperative (for example if they have previously failed to travel to accommodation Page 11 of 22 Published for Home Office staff on 27 March 2024 allocated to them without reasonable excuse) or they are requesting accommodation for the first time, having previously been supported through subsistence payments only, and it appears that they delayed a request for accommodation without good reason in order to take advantage of the concession.
If an individual has a child with special educational needs who has gained entry to an appropriate school, accommodation should normally be provided near to the school, unless it is clear that accommodation can be arranged near to another location where there is an appropriate school that the child can be transferred to.
The policy assumes that there is a good, blanket availability of school places nationwide, based on the wide dispersal policy of the Home Office.
However, we are concerned that this policy does not take into account availability of school places on an area by area basis meaning that some children are placed in areas where there is a chronic shortage of school places, generally in areas of already higher deprivation where accommodation is cheaper to source.
In one of our cases, where there is now a larger concentration of asylum accommodation which is a more recent development, there were no secondary school places available in the whole town, and nothing available within travelling distance of the family home. It was 14 weeks before a school place was provided.
We also have evidence from working in particular areas where with little or no notice interim accommodation (hotels) have been taken over by the Home Office and used to house large numbers of families, which has placed significant strain on education providers and the local authority for the area to provide school places.
In one particular area, thanks to the pro-active work of the local authority, partners and charities, we experienced particularly strong practice in solving a problem that was not theirs in the making. We are also very keen to hear about positive practice in areas and how they are overcoming these challenges.
We believe that this may be a larger problem looking at the UK as a whole, with the way accommodation is sourced and allocated taking into account locally available resources and provision for children and young people.
As we scope the issue and look more into barriers to education for asylum seeking children, we are very interested in hearing from people - those working with asylum seeking children, parents of children and children themselves about the impact of education delays on children. If you have information you would like to share you can email us at casework@togethermigrantchildren.org.uk
For organisations, you can complete the survey we have created to gather data and experiences on the issue.
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