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Office for Standards in Education, October 2003
Ofsted visited 37 schools in 11 Local Education Authorities
(LEAs) between summer 2001 and spring 2003, to evaluate the
impact of the arrival of pupils from asylum-seeker families.
This report makes recommendations to schools, LEAs and those
with national responsibility based on its findings.
In particular it urges that consideration be given to the
educational impact of decisions about where asylum-seeker
families are housed; that guidance and information on asylum-seeker
pupils is shared effectively with schools and between agencies
(to avoid problems such as pupils arriving at schools without
warning and without basic details such as their ages being
known); and that schools ensure that all staff are up to date
with their knowledge and understanding of the linguistic,
educational and cultural needs of their pupils.
The inspectors found that the quality of teaching and support
for the great majority of asylum-seeker pupils was at least
satisfactory, and often good, and the support for schools
from LEAs was at least satisfactory. Schools committed much
time, effort and resources to integrating the pupils in a
positive manner, and several had well-established, effective
arrangements for admitting and inducting newly-arrived pupils.
However, some schools were less well informed about basic
procedures and guidance, and some struggled to meet the learning
needs of the pupils. For example, in some areas to which asylum
seekers were dispersed, class teachers lacked expertise with
pupils new to English. Staff in many schools had not had any
training to enable them to identify pupils who had suffered
trauma.
The report includes case studies of effective provision for
asylum-seeker pupils, and examples of initiatives taken by
schools to help asylum-seeker families to become integrated
in their communities. These include:
- A computer club where newly arrived families could access
newspapers in their own language and catch up on news from
their home countries
- A notice board for families with leaflets and information
in their home languages
- A series of folders detailing aspects of school life and
facilities in the local community, consisting of photographs
and simple sentences in English and Albanian
- Community rooms that acted as drop-in centres for parents
seeking help
- A forum for local residents, asylum seekers, voluntary
agencies, church representatives, police, councillors and
a school representative, which met in the school to tackle
concerns affecting all parties
- Extra-curricular home language clubs for pupils and their
families
- The use of bilingual home-school liaison workers
In areas covered by the National Asylum Support Service dispersal
scheme, an Ethnic Minority Achievement Grant (EMAG) provided
some of the funding for these activities, but several schools
had to draw on their own budgets.
The report points out that despite the trauma of leaving
of their home country, asylum-seeker pupils and their parents
"often provided an intoxicating cocktail of motivation
and determination to succeed", which had a positive effect
on staff and other pupils.
Download the full report from www.ofsted.gov.uk/publications
Ofsted (2003). The education of asylum-seeker pupils. London:
Ofsted.
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