Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she plans to take steps to ensure there is sufficient availability of English for Speakers of Other Languages teaching provision to support people who arrive in the UK as refugees and asylum seekers from Ukraine.

The Home Office works closely with other Government departments to ensure mainstream English language provision meets the needs of refugees.

Individuals aged 19 or over with refugee status are immediately eligible for funding through the Department for Education’s Adult Education budget and exempt from the three-year residency requirement rule. This includes funding for English For Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) classes.

Asylum seekers are also eligible to receive funding if they have lived in the UK for 6 months or longer while their claim is being considered and no decision has been made, or are receiving local authority support under section 23C or section 23CA of the Children Act 1989 or the Care Act 2014.