May 2022

School placements for children from outside of the UK

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Introduction

This release provides data collected via the ‘School placements for children from outside of the UK’ survey from local authorities in England.

It provides data on the number of children from outside of the UK who have applied for a school place split by the following countries of origin:

  • Afghanistan (arrivals via Afghanistan Relocation and Assistance Policy or Afghanistan Citizens Resettlement Scheme, and British Nationals) 
  • Ukraine (arrivals via the Family Scheme or Homes for Ukraine)
  • Hong Kong (arrivals via the Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) welcome programme)

The data relates to applications and offers made for the current 2021-22 academic year, with the latest release covering the period 1 September 2021 to 27 May 2022. Data is also included on how many offers have been made within 15 days. For children waiting for an offer, local authorities and schools will be working on the process of finding a suitable place within 15 school days. These will be at different stages in the process depending on the date of new arrivals. 

Each resettlement scheme has been active for different lengths of time. Families from Hong Kong are likely to have entered the country from January 2021, those from Afghanistan from August 2021 and those from Ukraine from March 2022. We would, therefore, for example, expect the proportion of applications that have received offers to be higher for families from Afghanistan than those from Ukraine.

There are several reasons why a family with school age children may not have made an application immediately. For example:

  • They may have recently arrived and not yet applied for a place;
  • They may be undertaking remote learning of their country’s own curriculum;
  • Some children may have applied for Further Education;
  • The Ukrainian compulsory school age starts at 7 and so some families may be unaware that compulsory school age starts at 5 in the UK;   
  • The Ukrainian school year ends on 1 June, some families may be unaware the UK school year has not yet ended.

This data has been collected and analysed quickly to inform the Department for Education's response to the resettlement of families from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine. The DfE recognises the operational importance of publishing this data in a timely manner and so is publishing this it as management information.

The data is collected from local authorities on a voluntary basis. In the latest return, the response rate was 77%. Imputations to adjust for non-response have been made to produce national and regional estimates. All local authority data is as reported, with nil returns reported as an ‘x’. For further information see ‘Background’ and ‘Methodology’.

Headline facts and figures - 2022

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About this release

Background

This release provides data collected via the ‘School placements for children from outside of the UK’ survey from local authorities in England.

It provides data on the number of children from outside of the UK who have applied for a school place split by the following countries of origin: 

  • Afghanistan (arrivals via Afghanistan Relocation and Assistance Policy or Afghanistan Citizens Resettlement Scheme) 
  • Ukraine (arrivals via the Family Scheme or Homes for Ukraine)
  • Hong Kong (arrivals via the Hong Kong British Nationals (Overseas) welcome programme)

Data was also asked on applications from ‘All other countries outside of the the UK’, however, because many local authorities have reported not currently holding this information, it is not including in this publication. 

Data is also included on the number of offers made within 15 days of application. For children waiting for an offer, local authorities and schools will be working on the process of finding a suitable place within 15 school days. There are many reasons why some children have not been offered a place and why some applications may take longer than 15 days to process, including where the Fair Access Protocol is used.

There are several reasons why a family with school age children may not have made an application immediately. For example:

  • They may have recently arrived and not yet applied for a place;
  • They may be undertaking remote learning of their country’s own curriculum;
  • Some children may have applied for Further Education;
  • The Ukrainian compulsory school age starts at 7 and so some families may be unaware that compulsory school age starts at 5 in the UK;   
  • The Ukrainian school year ends on 1 June, some families may be unaware the UK school year has not yet ended.

Data quality

This data has been collected and analysed quickly to inform the Department's response to the resettlement of families from Afghanistan, Hong Kong and Ukraine. The Department recognises the operational importance of publishing this data in a timely manner and so is publishing this it as management information.

The data is collected from local authorities on a voluntary basis with the latest return covering the period 1 September 2021 to 27 May 2022. In the latest return the response rate was 77%. 

Adjustments for non-response

Imputations to adjust for non-response have been made to produce national and regional estimates. All local authority figures are as reported, with nil returns presented as an ‘x’. In recognition of the uncertainty of these adjustments, all national and regional figures have been rounded to the nearest 100. Any figure less than 50 has been presented as ‘low’.

The imputation methodology follows:

  1. If a local authority provided data in the latest survey, that data is used.
  2. If no return was provided - for Ukraine data - data is used from a previous shorter survey. An uplift is applied to these figures based on changes seen between the two surveys for local authorities who supplied returns for both.
  3. If no return was provided - for Afghanistan and Hong Kong data - estimates are produced based on each local authorities' population size (pupil numbers from the Spring 2022 school census) and rates seen amongst returning local authorities.

We will review this methodology as the series progresses.

For information on further adjustments to the data as a result of quality checks, see the ‘Methodology’ section.

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Ukraine

  • There has been an estimated total of 11,400 applications for a school place for children from Ukraine. 7,100 of these were for primary school places and 4,200 were for secondary school places.
  • This includes adjustments made for non-response and is based on a figure of 9,300 reported by 77% of local authorities
  • Of these 11,400 applications, 9,900 offers have been made (87% of applications). This figure is also adjusted for non-response. 6,300 of these were for primary school places and 3,500 were for secondary school places.  
  • Outstanding applications will be at different stages in the process depending on the date of new arrivals and may not yet have been offered a place. For children waiting for an offer, local authorities and schools will be working on the process of finding a suitable place within 15 school days. 
  • The map below provides the number of offers reported by local authority.
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Afghanistan

  • There has been an estimated total of 5,500 applications for a school place for children from Afghanistan. 3,500 of these were for primary school places and 2,000 were for secondary school places.
  • This includes adjustments made for non-response and is based on a figure of 4,300 reported by 77% of local authorities
  • Of these 5,500 applications, 5,400 offers have been made (98% of applications). This figure is also adjusted for non-response. 3,400 of these were for primary school places and 1,900 were for secondary school places.  
  • Outstanding applications will be at different stages in the process depending on the date of new arrivals and may not yet have been offered a place. For children waiting for an offer, local authorities and schools will be working on the process of finding a suitable place within 15 school days. 
  • Most families from Afghanistan will have started entering the country from August 2021, whereas those from Ukraine from March 2022. We would, therefore, expect the proportion of applications that have received offers to be higher for families from Afghanistan than those from Ukraine..
  • The map below provides the number of offers reported by local authority.
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Hong Kong

  • There has been an estimated total of 8,500 applications for a school place for children from Hong Kong. 5,800 of these were for primary school places and 2,700 were for secondary school places.
  • This includes adjustments made for non-response and is based on a figure of 6,500 reported by 77% of all local authorities.
  • Of these 8,500 applications, 8,000 offers have been made (93% of applications). This figure is also adjusted for non-response. 5,500 of these were for primary school places and 2,500 were for secondary school places.  
  • Outstanding applications will be at different stages in the process depending on the date of new arrivals and may not yet have been offered a place. For children waiting for an offer, local authorities and schools will be working on the process of finding a suitable place within 15 school days. 
  • The map below provides the number of offers reported by local authority.
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Help and support

Methodology

Find out how and why we collect, process and publish these statistics.

Management information

Management information describes aggregate information collated and used in the normal course of business to inform operational delivery, policy development or the management of organisational performance. It is usually based on administrative data but can also be a product of survey data. The terms administrative data and management information are sometimes used interchangeably.

Contact us

If you have a specific enquiry about School placements for children from outside of the UK statistics and data:

Pupil Place Planning Data Team

Email: [email protected]
Contact name: Pupil Place Planning Data Team

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If you have a media enquiry:

Telephone: 020 7783 8300

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If you have a general enquiry about the Department for Education (DfE) or education:

Telephone: 037 0000 2288

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