Supporting refugee and aslyum seekers in secondary school

This report by the Refugee Council examined how secondary schools can work with parents and children of the refugee and asylum seeking community.

Key points:
- Young people reported that a high level of parent/ carer involvement existed, but this varied between one-off meetings to frequent encounters. Young people also felt that their parents did not allow a lack of English to prevent them from being involved, and generally felt very positive about the support they received from parents or carers.
- Parents and carers were generally satisfied with schools, and had high levels of involvement, particularly where there was good communication with the school and where the staff were supportive and approachable.
- Suggestions for improving engagement included better communication and feedback.
- Schools found effective engagement was an important factor in young people’s well-being and achievement and empowered parents to participate in their education. The importance of a welcoming environment and inductions was noted.
- Refugee Community Organisations emphasised the need to support parents and carers as they often found integration more difficult than did their children.
- Barriers to inclusion include: difficulties in accessing school places; bullying; racism; and financial barriers to extracurricular activities, school books, and uniforms.Practices found to break down barriers include: extended school status, home-school and community link workers, peer mentors and language support.

Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children

Following consultation the government have released their response and the reforms they intend to introduce.

They are:
(i) Ensuring that the Border and Immigration Agency, in exercising its functions, keeps children safe from harm while they are in the United Kingdom.
(ii) Putting in place better procedures for identifying and supporting unaccompanied asylum seeking children who are the victims of trafficking.
(iii) Locating unaccompanied asylum seeking children with specialist local authorities to ensure they receive the services they need.
(iv) Putting in place better procedures to assess age in order to ensure children and adults are not accommodated together.
(v) Resolving immigration status more quickly and, in turn, enabling care planning to focus on integration or early return to the country of origin.

Effective teachers for at risk schools and students

The National Comprehensive Centre for Teacher Quality, in the USA, have released this large report into at risk schools and students and the impact teachers can have. It aims to build on the "No Child Left Behind" strategy of the USA.

Key points:
- Highly Qualified Teachers are shown to have a significantly positive impact on their pupils.
- High qualifications in certain subjects (such as mathematics) has a stronger link to pupil attainment in that subject than other subjects (such as reading).
- Teacher experience has big increases in the first 4-5 years of teaching, after that the benefits of additional years teaching are minimal.

There are also suggestions for special educational needs, behaviour management, succession planning and initial teacher training.