Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance her Department provides to schools to support refugee and asylum seeker children.

The department does not currently provide schools with specific guidance on how to support refugee and asylum seeker children. Our policy position is that schools will take responsibility for ensuring that all of their pupils, regardless of their background, are engaged, challenged and attain to the best of their abilities. As such, it is for head teachers to determine how to deploy the school’s resources to best effect in meeting the particular needs of their pupils – including those who have refugee or asylum seeker status. Schools have flexibility over how they use their funding to support such pupils – including, where relevant, funding that is allocated for pupils for whom English is an additional language, and for those from financially deprived backgrounds.

If unaccompanied, asylum seeking children become looked-after by a local authority. The government is committed to ensuring that looked-after children, including those seeking asylum, are supported to succeed in education. Statutory guidance on ‘Promoting the Education of Looked-After Children’ and ‘The Roles and Responsibilities of Designated Teachers’ is available to support local authorities and schools in doing this. Revised versions of both documents, updated to include information on unaccompanied asylum seeking children, are due to be published on GOV.UK shortly.