Best Practice

How well are we supporting refugees and immigrants in primary schools?

Vulnerable children Mental health Pastoral issues Pupil wellbeing Behaviour
While the exact numbers are unclear, we know that thousands of refugee children are arriving in our schools. Dr Stephanie Thornton considers what psychological and mental health challenges these pupils may present with
New arrivals: UNICEF estimates that between January and June 2020, one-third of migrants/refugees arriving in Europe were children and that 3,445 child migrants/refugees came to UK in that period - Adobe Stock

Immigration is a matter of huge public concern. The public debate focuses on the large numbers of people coming to the UK and how to reduce those numbers. There is far less discussion of our humanitarian obligations to these people, and particularly toward child migrants and refugees. And there is surprisingly little research into these children and what their needs might be.

 

The scale of the issue

It is difficult to get a clear fix on the numbers of recently arrived child migrants and refugees currently in our schools. UK sources such as the Office for National Statistics are coy, or do not measure this, or as emerged in the news in November, have wildly inaccurate data. Our best guess comes from UNICEF.

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