1. Increasing Muslim Learner Participation in Further Education Project report to the LSC South East March 2008

2. Project overview This project in South East was a part of a national LSC programme looking at how to engage Muslim Learners more effectively in FE. Project objectives:  Understand the perceptions of work-based learning amongst Muslim learners, with special reference in the South East region to refugees and asylum seekers and other migrants who have not grown up with the UK educational system  Understand the barriers faced by these learners that could prevent them from participating in FE  Identify practical opportunities to engage these learners more effectively in FE Key activities:  A workshop with a diverse group of young Muslim asylum seekers from the region (including those who are in work-based learning and those who are not)  A stakeholder event bringing together providers of FE and colleges and LSC colleagues The outcomes of this project will inform a programme of implementation and implications workshops

3. Acknowledgements We would like to give special thanks to the following for their help in reaching migrant learners and their continued support and advice in the overall research of this project:  The Kent Refugee Action Network  The Riverside Youth Centre, Canterbury We would also like to thank the following organisations for their participation in the stakeholder event:  Amersham and Wycombe College, High Wycombe  West Berkshire Training Consortium  Thanet College, Kent  Highbury College, Portsmouth

4. Findings: barriers faced by asylum seekers attempting to enter FE

5. Barriers faced by asylum seekers attempting to engage in Further Education The stakeholders identified the following barriers that may prevent refugee and asylum seeker learners from participating in FE:  Limited family support (or non-existent family support in instances in which the young people are unaccompanied)  Lack of experience of the English mainstream education system  Lack of coordination amongst organisations (learning providers, IAG services, social services, etc.)  These themes are each explored in more detail on the following slides.

6. Limited family support A number of factors were identified that indicate that refugee and asylum seekers often suffer owing to issues that arise from the family  Many of these asylum seekers arrive in the UK unaccompanied. At such a young age and with obvious language barriers they quickly find that the pressures of being in a new country are matched by those of lacking their familiar support mechanism  Furthermore, many find themselves with high levels of pressure from their family in their country of origin to achieve quickly, despite the fact that they face enormous difficulties in doing this  Even in cases where the migrant learner is accompanied by their family, the challenge for them to succeed in FE is still high. The effect to the family dynamic on arrival in the UK can be great  There is also the issue that the parents may not place much significance in Further Education if this is not the tradition in their own country. This can mean other things can take priority and learners end up missing days of college, and may also mean they may not receive the right level of support to remain motivated and engaged in education

7. The difficulties migrant learners face adapting to formal mainstream education One of the core barriers we found through both our stakeholder event and earlier research was that migrant learners find it very difficult to adapt to many of the basic “soft” skills needed to stay in FE  These can include things such as keeping time and sticking to a timetable, which in many cases learners fail to do, despite a keen willingness to learn and remain in FE  The learning hours in a FE course are not enough to ensure a learner gains these skills, and the current pastoral support, nor the ESOL lessons are adequate to cover these foundation skills The other barrier identified is the extent to which migrant learners require specialist intervention succeed in FE  The current approach is to treat refugee and asylum seeker learners in exactly the same way British learners would be treated  However, the problems that can arise from this is that the challenges that migrant learners face, and the issues that hold them back, are considerably different to those that a British learner face and so some level of specialist intervention does seem important  The catch-22 of this approach is that it runs the risk of creating a barrier to integration

8. Lack of coordination amongst stakeholder organisations There appears to be a significant lack of coordination amongst the type of organisations, which a learner who arrived in this country would encounter along the ideal educational route  Given the challenges so far discussed it is clear that a holistic approach is needed and this is extremely difficult in the current context  Currently, it is not easily identifiable to learners, local government, FE colleges, voluntary sector organisations or social services which organisations exist to provide specific services in this field  This also creates difficulty in that they can not be identified by funding bodies such as the LSC

9. Further work and practical opportunities to engage asylum seeker and refugee learners in Further Education

10. Learner engagement and integration The participants at the stakeholder event identified a number of practical opportunities to practically engage and integrate refugee and asylum seeker learners  An essential means to combat some of the family related issues that migrant learners face is a quality pastoral support in FE colleges; it was suggested that this could come about through a number of measures e.g. a more focussed Equal Opportunities policy, student forum, a buddy system connecting migrant learners with other learners through the student union, etc  It is also important for the College to make sure it is in a position that each learner is clear on the administrative responsibilities they have to stay in the College. That is to say, that it must take ownership in ensuring that each learner is aware and understands the documentation and procedures the College requires  Most importantly the pastoral care in FE needs to look at how it can ensure that migrant learners are aware of the local services they can take advantage of to help them outside of college. This can only be done through a clear coordination of related services

11. The ideal learner journey Before reaching a position where the services available to migrant learners can be successfully mapped and coordinated, it is important to understand the educational journey of a refugee and asylum seeker from the moment they arrive in the UK to when they complete their time in FE In doing this there is a need to map what would make an ideal learner journey and what would make a bad learner journey. In doing this we will be able to chart both what is right about the current system and where the gaps exist and what challenges and pitfalls a refugee learner faces The methodology for such a task would be through workshops with a range of stakeholders including learners, service providers, and social services in an attempt to gauge a real understanding of what a learner faces on their route through the education system

12. Mapping the institutional providers in the region Through the additional funding provided by the South East region there is an opportunity to conduct work to develop a map of services for migrant learners in parts of the South-East region. Specifically, this work will:  Understand the ideal migrant learner journey  Understand the current migrant learner journey  Analyse the extent to which the current journey matches the ideal  Understand what needs to change to get the current situation to match up to the ideal (e.g. funding, staff development, IAG)  Collect information on opportunities/barriers/examples of good practice In doing this it would be important to review the recent consultation carried out by DIUS into ‘foundational tier learning’ to fully understand the accreditation and funding status of different types of voluntary sector organisations that work in this field