Refugee and Asylum-Seeking Children's Achievement

This technical policy briefing – released in May 2025 – builds upon the research and policy work of the Education Policy Institute (EPI), The Bell Foundation, and Refugee Education UK (REUK), responding to opportunities in the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, to set out a roadmap for improving the poor educational outcomes of refugee and asylum-seeking children.

This group currently receives little support yet have attainment worse than that of children in receipt of statutory services and/or the most vulnerable subset of socio-economically disadvantaged children.

This policy briefing includes evidence of the need for refugee and asylum-seeking children’s education policy, relevant provisions of the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, and both wider and specific recommendations to include in the Bill and/or accompanying guidance.

The most relevant parts of the Bill for refugee and asylum-seeking children concern school admissions (clauses 47-49), the register of children not in school (clauses 24-29), and the extension of duties to promote the achievement of vulnerable children (Clause 6).

We recommend that the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill addresses:

• Measures to strengthen children’s social care and safeguarding as well as measures affecting schools.
• Tightening of the proposed local authority (LA) power to direct any school to admit a pupil who has been refused admission to all reasonably-located schools through statutory guidance.
• Setting time limits on the process to secure a school place as part of Fair Access Protocols, which also require statutory guidance and monitoring.
• A further duty on LAs to support migrant parents to report when their child is not in school.
• Expanding the extension of the Virtual School Head’s duty to promote not only the educational achievement of Children In Need (with a social worker) but also to include refugee and asylum-seeking children.