Schools

In Sweden, Noor went straight to school; in Britain, Ammar waited six months

A new study contrasts the radically different education offered to young refugees arriving alone in Britain and Sweden

Fran Abrams

Tue 13 Feb 2018 07.00 GMT

Noor and Ammar are two teenage boys with a lot in common. They』ve never met, but both made perilous journeys to Europe, arriving unaccompanied at the age of 16. Both are bright, ambitious and determined to make a contribution.

Noor – sharp, confident; looks you straight in the eye when he speaks – hasn』t met Ammar, but he could be talking for both of them: 「It took me six months to get here and we had a lot of problems on the way,」 he says. 「I didn』t know anybody, I couldn』t speak the language.」

But that’s where the similarities end, because Ammar, who is from Syria, applied for asylum in the UK, while Noor’s journey ended in Sweden. Their contrasting experiences are under scrutiny in a research project on refugee education by the universities of Nottingham and Lund. Its findings will make uncomfortable reading for education leaders in England.

While new arrivals in Sweden are always in school within a month and can remain there till age 20, those arriving the UK often can』t find a school place, particularly if they are GCSE age – a year when schools are focusing on league tables – or older, at which point only a limited education is on offer.

The difference between the two boys』 experience is enlightening. Within a month, Noor was in a foster family and in school. Ammar – not his real name – struggled for months to find a school in Nottingham, and eventually was offered only basic courses that didn』t nearly meet his needs.

Arriving in Malmo, Noor was taken to the Välkomsten or the 「Welcoming」, the first port of call for new arrivals in Sweden. From there he was swiftly assigned a town, Helsingborg, a foster family and a school place at Nicolaiskolan, one of five schools in the town that are designated to take these young people. He was placed in a small group to learn Swedish. Money doesn』t seem to have been an issue.

Noor and his friend, Samir Sultani, were both child tailors in a past life, and they』ve been supported to start a business making sustainable fabric shopping bags – their designs are proving so popular they』re struggling to meet demand.

「When I started school it became better and better for me,」 Noor says. 「I have a new family, I have friends from here and all over the world.」

Listening are Henry Kulaya and Sally Coulton, secondary heads from Nottingham, who are in Helsingborg as part of the research project. Coulton is head of Nottingham’s only local authority secondary school, Ellis Guilford. The other schools are academies, she says, so they can』t be forced by the council to take new arrivals: 「[They] can put barriers in the way as to why they can』t take these students with additional needs.」

She sees a huge difference in attitudes to these young people: 「Sweden sees them as people who can contribute a lot.」

Ammar’s experience underlines her point. He’s the kind of migrant the UK should welcome: from an educated Syrian family, academically gifted and determined to become a doctor. Yet, arriving at the age of 16 in Nottingham, his potential was ignored.

Despite missing out on education because of the war in Syria, Ammar had done his best to keep up his studies. He left his family behind on a perilous boat journey to Greece and eventually found an aunt in Nottingham. His priority was to get into school but his attempts were ignored: 「Me and my auntie went to the council and she filled in some forms. They said they』d send me a letter, but they didn』t,」 he says.

He waited six months, increasingly depressed: 「They destroyed the whole idea that I had in my mind, that they would take care of me. I felt nobody cared. I wouldn』t achieve what I wanted and therefore my life would be bad. Education’s really important for me.」 He was finally offered a college place – but only to study English, maths and ICT, and not the sciences he needed to study medicine.

He bought a GCSE science syllabus to study alone, and after only a few months passed with a C. He’s now studying for A-levels in a local sixth form and is much more optimistic.

Joanna McIntyre, associate professor at the University of Nottingham’s School of Education, is finalising a research report that highlights the contrasts between Sweden and the UK. The project found young people in Britain are often left to negotiate layers of bureaucracy alone. Many found themselves in temporary accommodation, which caused problems in getting school places.

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「At the moment it feels as if in England the response is based on control and fear,」 she says. Many of those who did find school places did so only after the intervention of the city’s voluntary sector Refugee Forum: 「God knows where some would be without them.」

The picture is not entirely bleak – Nottingham city council has been approached by the Department for Education, which is interested in a facility it runs at Ellis Guilford school for 15- to 16-year-olds. Could similar schemes be funded elsewhere? The DfE maintains, however, that there are rules to ensure unaccompanied children are placed in schools: 「They are looked-after children, which means they must be given top priority for admission to a state-funded school,」 a spokesman said.

Nationally, there are few hard facts on the numbers of asylum-seeking children out of school. But Helen Johnson, of the Refugee Council, says there are vast disparities depending on where in the country young people end up. 「Even within a local authority, there can be differences,」 she says. 「It might depend on a discussion about your age, which can take months. It might depend on the pressure on schools in the area, and on the will and whim of individuals.」

Back at Ellis Guilford school, the biggest concern at present is for a Vietnamese pupil who was found on a cannabis farm after being trafficked to the UK. He was placed with a foster parent and started school in September, but three days later immigration officials told him a visa application matching his fingerprints showed his age as 18. That meant he could no longer live in foster care, nor continue at school. In Sweden, he would have been allowed to continue in both till 20.

Nottingham’s senior achievement consultant for vulnerable groups, Jane Daffe, says she fears for the boy. The day after being told he must leave school and his foster home, he disappeared. 「The fear is he could be back in the hands of the traffickers,」 Daffe says. 「Whether he’s 15 or 18, he’s a victim and he’s vulnerable.」

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本文來源：https://www.theguardian.com/education/2018/feb/13/sweden-school-britain-education-young-refugees