Some newly arrived girls wait months for a school place. This is what happens in the meantime.
New shoes, blazers bought a size too big, first day photographs on the doorstep. Today, most children in the country went back to school.
Some did not. Not because they were unwell, and not because their families kept them at home, but because there is no school place for them to go back to.
Why this happens
Every child in the UK has a right to education. Getting hold of it is a different matter.
Research by the Education Policy Institute and the Bell Foundation found that up to a quarter of refugee and asylum-seeking children wait more than three months for a school or college place, and some wait close to a year. Almost two thirds of the charity and local authority practitioners surveyed had seen cases of newly arrived young people going without a place for a prolonged period.
The delays are worst for 14 to 16 year olds. Part of the reason is uncomfortable to write down: schools are reluctant to take on students in Years 10 and 11, because those students will sit GCSEs that count towards the school’s results.
A girl who arrives in July, at fifteen, has landed at the least welcoming point in the school calendar.
Not through anything she has done, and not through any one person’s decision, but through the accumulated logic of a system that was not built with her in mind.
What a year out of education actually costs
It is tempting to think of this as lost learning, and it is that. But it is also a lost year of everything else school quietly provides.
Somewhere to be each morning. People your own age who become people you know. A reason to speak English out loud every day, with people to practise it on. The ordinary daily proof that you are expected somewhere.
One of our students arrived from Colombia in July last year, too late to enrol in Year 11, and could not access a college course either. She spoke very little English. For almost a year, while her family sorted out her immigration status, Baytree was her only access to education. She starts college this month.
That is a good outcome. It should not have depended on there happening to be a charity in her borough.
What Arrive & Thrive does
Arrive & Thrive is Baytree’s response to that gap. It supports newly arrived girls aged 10 to 19 who do not have a place in a school or college, and it exists to get them into one.
Girls join us for ESOL classes, structured lessons that prepare them for school or college, and maths and digital skills built into the curriculum. We help families with school applications, which are complicated enough in your first language. There is mentoring, so every girl has one consistent adult in her corner. There are social activities, outings around London, and after school EAL classes and youth sessions for those who want them.
It is not a replacement for school, and we are clear about that. It is a bridge. Every part of it is designed so that a girl leaves us for a classroom somewhere else.
As the new academic year begins
Over the coming weeks we will welcome a new group of girls to Arrive & Thrive. Some have been waiting months already. Most speak little English. All of them should, by rights, have been putting on a uniform this morning like everyone else.
They will get there. In the meantime, they have somewhere to go, something to do, and people who expect them.
If you work with newly arrived families in south London, or you would like to know more about the programme, we would be glad to hear from you.
