Newly-Arrived Children: EAL and Other Provisions Project

The Unaccompanied Asylum-Seeking Children (UASC) team at the Department for Education (DfE) observes that the increase in the number of UASC arriving in the country over the last couple of years has created a particular challenge for the team: the mandatory National Transfer Scheme has meant that UASC are increasingly less concentrated geographically. Indeed, one of the questions that the team is concerned with is how can refugee children (including UASC) be effectively able to access English as Additional Language (EAL) /English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) provision (including post 16) and other cultural supports in this context recognising that some will be placed in less culturally diverse and geographically rural settings? The UASC team is keen to explore remote access as an option. The Principal Investigator will work with a research assistant to conduct this project. Through observations, interviews, data capture and the collation of resources from organisations that have developed best practice, this project seeks to pool together the resources gleaned from a range of stakeholders within the UK to build a virtual hub, enabling remote access to resources for newly arrived children in different parts of the UK, as well as for the teachers and practitioners who work with them. During the project term, there will be four workshops organised to monitor and evaluate the progress made, and ensure that we are meeting the aims and objectives of the project. Ultimately, the project will identify and bring together best practice and resources to be uploaded an app and set up an accessible space. It will involve young people from the different organisations partnered with us testing the app from the beginning to improve its effectiveness. This will enable us to gauge the possibility of remote access to resources for minors who are sent to regions where resources are scarce as set out by the UASC team at the DfE.

The goals of the project are:

• To understand how central/local government can better ensure refugee children (including UASC) can effectively access high quality EAL/ESOL provision particularly outside of school settings – including in 16+ colleges and particularly in rural settings and less diverse areas where provision may not be readily/easily available.

• To identify examples of best practice and share them through workshops targeted at policymakers, practitioners, local authorities, schools, charities and NGOs and involving young people who have been through the system recently.

• To explore remote access as a possible tool to enhance refugee children’s experiences.

• To develop, test and maintain a remote access tool for newly-arrived young people in the UK.

• To support best practice in the provision of support to refugee children.