Understanding refugees, British nationals and young asylum seeking children
Refugee and young asylum seeking children often arrive to our schools through displacement and conflict. These children will require support with their language acquisition as well as their wellbeing.
What is a refugee?
A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee their country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group. Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so.
What is a young asylum seeker?
Young asylum seekers are children under the age of 18 who having left their country due to war, violence or persecution who are seeking asylum in the UK. A young asylum seeker in the UK will be seeking refugee status.
Devon recently held a forum with Devon young asylum seekers and from this feedback Devon has adopted the term ‘young asylum seekers’ to identify these children and young people. Nationally, unaccompanied asylum seeking children is still the most common terminology and this is useful to know as national resources still use this terminology.
Hong Kong British nationals
In January 2021, the UK opened a new resettlement route for Hong Kong British National (Overseas) citizens (BNOs) and their close family members. Many families have already arrived from Hong Kong and schools have been welcoming them into their community.
Many children and their families from Hong Kong have relatively good level of English language proficiency. However, they will still require a well-planned support to help them boost their language skills, which in turn will enable them to take greater advantage of the education opportunities available to them.
As well as the language provision, children would benefit from pastoral support. The Hong Kong Well UK have developed a two-minute guide for teachers to help them to better understand and prepare for children’s arrival.
Seeking expert support and guidance
- Book an interpreter for a meeting or assessment.
- Arrange bilingual support in the classroom, one-to-one or in small groups.
- Request a free quote to have consent forms, policies, reports and other documents translated.
- Maintained schools and EYFS settings attached to maintained schools can book EDEAS clinics.
- Purchase Advisory consultancy.
- Supporting multilingualism policy exemplar and guidance.
- Proficiency assessments .
- Equality and diversity policy and cycle review exemplar and guidance.
You can access the following via EDEAS Connect:
- Welcome meetings and checklists
- Classroom resources and suggested reading
- Wellbeing suggested resources
- Advice on monitoring language acquisition
- Advice on SEN and multilingualism
- Guidance on the ‘silent’ period
- Bilingual resources
- Home language GCSEs guidance
- SATS guidance
- One-minute guides
- Understanding different cultures and faiths
- Information on accessing our clinics
We will shortly also be offering academies and other settings a package to include consultancy and a subscription to EDEAS connect – a subscription only access hub for expert resources, guidance and community support for schools and settings. Please visit this page again or sign up to our EDEAS newsletter.
To access further support please visit our Accessing support webpage.