Written by Muna Mitchell
Muna has held Senior Leadership positions in Pastoral, SEND and Safeguarding along with teaching Science in secondary schools across Botswana, Oman and the UK. She Studied for an M.Ed. in Inclusion and Diversity with a focus on supporting Refugees in Education.
As described by the UNHCR “A refugee is a person who has been forced to flee their country due to war, violence, or serious threats to their life, and who requires international protection.”
A total of 117 million people at the end of 2025 were displaced from their homes due to conflict and violence and of those 42 million people became refugees of which approximately 20 million are children. The UNCRC (2000) clearly states that “Every child has a right to an education” however, UNICEF research has shown that children and their subsequent educational chances pay a heavy price during conflict. Education suffers through damage to school buildings by bombing and gunfire, the death or injury of teachers and support staff and the use of school buildings by soldiers. In a war zone, the education system is not the priority as families struggle to find food, shelter, and safety. This means that the education pathway of refugee children may have been interrupted for many years prior to them seeking asylum.
Continued global humanitarian crises force people into countries that are often very dissimilar from their home cultures. Sheikh and Anderson (2018) describe how refugees suffer from profound culture shock on arrival in the UK and must undergo a period of acculturation. Sometimes as a refugee this acculturation occurs more than once depending on the individual person’s journey and the countries they have travelled through. Fuller and Hayes (2020) describe how the experiences a refugee encounters on first arrival are often just as traumatising as those experiences that were left behind. This interweaves the themes of past and present and suggests strongly that in education, for example the voices of child refugees need to be regularly consulted. It seems essential that we ensure that we are not making assumptions around which life experiences are causing distress and where our support needs to be focussed.
The UNHCR has acknowledged that young refugees often have high academic aspirations with education seen as a reliable way to escape less than ideal current circumstances and tertiary education particularly held in high esteem. It also states that higher education and skills are a critical link between learning and earning which allows for sustainable futures and enhanced social cohesion. Stevenson and Willott (2007) suggest that one of the main barriers to education is the initial struggle with academic language and refugees who are given multiple opportunities of English language training with an academic focus are much more likely to attend school. Lack of English language skills make it difficult not only for students to progress in their learning but to make emotional connections with other pupils and staff. The Bristol Refugee Rights impact report (2020/21) states that “There is a lack of strong English progression pathways and support into higher education. Much of the provision is unaccredited and the curriculum is not prescribed.” For schools, there are additional challenges to overcome to provide the right support and monitor student progress and attainment as there is often limited prior data for many refugee students. Education which had been completed in other countries is not always recognized. For example, refugee students may have English Language certificates from their home countries which in theory they could use to access university courses, but UK universities only accept a certificate of English language proficiency (IELTS) which can be expensive to complete.
Refugees who are aiming for Higher Education can sometimes be under tight time constraints to fit into a rigid school system in the UK. Bajwa et al (2017) concludes that refugees entering straight into the secondary school system have a lack of time to establish trust and can sometimes be mistrustful around public figures which impacts their ability to progress forward. As Gately (2018) concludes it is challenging in a short space of time to establish strong pupil staff relationships which could provide guidance for next steps and support refugee students in understanding the options available to them.
The Schools of Sanctuary (2021) network which includes stakeholders such as teachers, support staff, parents, governors, and community groups has as one of its central theme’s being pupil voice. Lawrence (2019) explains that “the voices of child refugees are forgotten, and young people are not regularly consulted about their needs or coping strategies” As mentioned above, the main difficulties of accessing education are language barriers, arrival point in terms of education, lack of informed choices and overcoming gaps in education created by conflict. The key turning point for these children and their subsequent entry to Higher Education seems to centre around their GCSE and A level choices. There are institutional barriers to higher education for students from ethnic minority groups, for students who are then also refugees these barriers are even higher.