• Warning: this article contains mentions of suicidal ideation

Child refugees are having to wait months for places in UK schools due to wide-ranging issues in the education system, openDemocracy has learnt.

The long waits are leaving traumatised teenagers “increasingly vulnerable”, experts say.

Waheed*, 16, arrived in London last year following a deeply traumatic experience fleeing the Taliban in Afghanistan. His mother was one of 182 people killed in a bomb blast outside Kabul airport on 26 August 2021 as people waited to board an evacuation plane. Waheed and his four brothers survived but had to return to their village.

They then travelled for five months, walking and taking trains when they could to reach their father in England. When they finally made it to the UK, the six of them were forced to share two hotel rooms in Streatham. Not only was the comfort of home gone, but Waheed didn’t speak English. One night his father took him to hospital because he was feeling suicidal.

It took seven months for Waheed to be given a school place. That prolonged absence from education can have severe consequences for traumatised children, according to Emily Gough, a child and adolescent psychotherapist.

“Waheed and many other young people have experienced the traumatic loss of family members, homes, home countries, opportunities and protection,” she told openDemocracy.

“Access to education is only one aspect of a young person’s life they need but a crucially significant one. In good enough environments schools offer young people a safe, reliable, predictable space in which to begin to explore new attachment relationships both with adults and peers.”

Last year, more than 15,000 of the 89,389 people who applied for asylum were 17 or younger.

There is no national data on the waiting times for school admission for asylum seekers and refugees but based on the 60 interviews conducted for this piece with students, teachers, parents and charities, most miss out on education for months.

The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that all children have the right to education. This right remains valid even when forced to leave one’s own country. However, school admission delays, lengthy and complex asylum procedures and fragmented communication within the education system contribute to a failure to consistently uphold this right in the UK.

A government spokesperson said: “We know that refugee and asylum-seeking children are often some of the most vulnerable in our society and that being in school is vital to helping them to integrate into their communities.”

‘20 school days’

Haya, 17, managed to board an evacuation plane with her parents and two siblings just a few hours before the explosion that killed Waheed’s mother. Arriving in the UK under the Afghan citizens resettlement scheme, the family was moved from hotel to hotel by the Home Office for 19 months and only given a comfortable house with a garden this March.

Though Haya and her siblings’ experience with school was smoother than Waheed’s, it too had disruptive gaps of up to three months at a time when they were moved around by the Home Office.

“We didn’t have accommodation for so long, we were still living in a hotel. We had to change school for my brother and sister and I had to change college again. It was so difficult,” she said.

The UK aims to find education access to child refugees and asylum seekers within 20 school days. There is no evidence of it ever being achieved. Local authorities struggle to find school placements for them and the lack of staff trained to handle refugee pupils slows down admissions.

David Boyle, CEO of Dunraven Educational Trust in Lambeth, south London, said the trust’s secondary schools “have eight applications for every place available”.

Diego Arenales, who teaches Spanish at City Heights E-ACT in Lambeth, a school where 44% of the 600 students have English as an additional language (EAL), said: “Many schools declare they are oversubscribed, they don’t admit any extra pupils, so [another] concern is that all migrant students end up in the same schools”.

A competitive system

Another reality that affects schools’ acceptance of refugee minors is league tables. The school performance chart is based on pupils’ exam results. But research has shown unaccompanied children, resettled refugees and child asylum-seekers trail non-migrant children in academic achievement. Think tank the Education Policy Institute estimates that by the time resettled refugee and asylum-seeking children get to GCSE exams, they are a year-and-half behind their non-migrant peers.

While primary schools are more open to taking children outside the normal admissions period, secondary schools are hesitant to accept students like Waheed who may perform poorly because they have no English and are not even educated to a high standard in their own language. In fact, students for Years 10 and 11, usually aged between 14 and 16, are the ones schools are most reluctant to admit as the academic focus falls on GCSEs and exam results affect school ratings.

“Imagine the embarrassment of a student who doesn’t speak or understand the language and doesn’t know how to ask for help,” Raziya Zarrien of refugee support charity Afghan Association Paiwand told openDemocracy. “Also, little things like raising their hands to say they don’t understand what is being talked about in class.”

In Kent, where asylum-seekers are often relocated within six months, schools are reluctant to accept teenagers that may only be there for weeks.

“No school wants to take students that are going to be moved, especially unaccompanied minors under the National Transfer Scheme,” said Razia Shariff, CEO at Kent Refugee Action Network (KRAN).

“A lot of them had no education or experience of a schooling system back home. They can’t really write in their own language and when they first arrive it’s not only about their language, it’s about adjusting to modern life and learning life skills.”

Ahsan*, now 20, arrived in Kent five years ago with his family under the Syrian resettlement scheme. He had to wait over two months and was then admitted to sixth form rather than Year 10, based on his appearance and despite having documents stating his age. The reduced schedule in sixth form also meant Ahsan had less time to make friends.

“If I were put in Year 10 I would have more friends,” he said. “In a class you can engage somehow, everyday, little by little, even if there was the language barrier that made it difficult to express feelings. I could have made one or two friends, they would have helped me a lot. I would have had a clearer idea of how things work in the UK.”

A spokesperson from the school said: “We only admit students based on the age stated in their documents. I can’t recall any case of admission based on appearance, but sixth form is often the best option for students arriving between 15 and 16 years old. We have bespoke time tables rather than a 9am to 3pm schedule that might be too intense for them.”

A number of charities are doing their best to minimise the effects of these long periods of exclusion from education by providing English lessons and skills training for families.

Paiwand, for instance, provided education for 186 Afghan refugee children waiting to access school between September and October 2021. The charity helped Haya enrol at Beacon High School in Islington in November 2021. Despite having little English, she surprised everyone by completing her GCSEs six months later and began applying to journalism schools.

The Department for Education (DfE) says it has done what it can to support child migrants who arrive via humanitarian and resettlement schemes by providing extra funding to local authorities. Last year, it announced £162.5m in funding for those who arrived via the Homes for Ukraine scheme. In 2022-23 £50m was awarded for those who arrived from Afghanistan and lived in temporary accommodation.

The DfE has also invested £434m in schools to support students who have English as an additional language, but schools can use the cash how they want and aren’t required to prioritise migrant students.

* Names have been changed

This story was produced with the support of Journalismfund Europe