August 2022

School placements for children from outside of the UK

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• Published: 29 September 2022
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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 school place applications for children from outside of the UK, 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 during the 2021/22 academic year, with the latest release covering the full year (1 September 2021 to 31 August 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 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; and  
• 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 overall response rate was 49%. This lower response rate is reflective of the timing of the return over the school holidays. 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 the ‘About this release’ and ‘Methodology’ sections.

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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 school place applications for children from outside of the UK, 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 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 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 31 August 2022. In the latest return the overall response rate was 48%. This lower response rate is reflective of the timing of the return over the school holidays.

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. Nil returns and partial nil returns (where a number is unknown by the local authority) are 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 in the latest survey, data is used from the previous survey or the previous imputation. An uplift is applied to these figures based on changes seen between the two surveys for local authorities who supplied returns for both.

The DfE will review this methodology as the series progresses.

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

Ukraine

• There has been an estimated total of 20,500 applications for a school place for children from Ukraine. 12,100 of these were for primary school places and 8,400 were for secondary school places.
• This includes adjustments made for non-response and is based on a figure of 10,900 reported by 49% of local authorities
• Of these 20,500 applications, 18,500 offers have been made (90% of applications). This figure is also adjusted for non-response. 11,200 of these were for primary school places and 7,300 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.

Afghanistan

• There has been an estimated total of 7,900 applications for a school place for children from Afghanistan. 4,900 of these were for primary school places and 3,000 were for secondary school places.
• This includes adjustments made for non-response and is based on a figure of 3,100 reported by 45% of local authorities
• Of these 7,900 applications, 7,600 offers have been made (97% of applications). This figure is also adjusted for non-response. 4,700 of these were for primary school places and 2,900 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.

Hong Kong

• There has been an estimated total of 13,200 applications for a school place for children from Hong Kong. 9,000 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 6,600 reported by 44% of all local authorities.
• Of these 13,200 applications, 12,200 offers have been made (92% of applications). This figure is also adjusted for non-response. 8,400 of these were for primary school places and 3,800 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.

Help and support

Methodology

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

• School placements for children from outside of the UK

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: SCAP.PPP@education.gov.uk
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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