Ayomi* is 19 years old. In November last year, she travelled from Sri Lanka to Wales, seeking asylum with her younger brother, Nirved*. On arrival in Swansea, they attempted to enrol at a number of sixth-form colleges but were turned away because courses had already started.

However, EYST, a local charity that works with minority groups in the area, introduced them to staff at Gower College Swansea and suddenly everything changed.

In no time at all, the siblings were helped to enrol into classes so they would not have to wait to start their learning journey - and they were also provided with bus passes to ensure they could get there each day.

The impact was huge. Both students are now studying A levels and are able to look forward to a life of opportunities - something that may not have been the case had the college not supported them.

It’s work like this that has allowed Gower College Swansea to become officially recognised as a College of Sanctuary in the UK. And Ayomi and Nirved are just two of the thousands of asylum seekers who have had life-changing opportunities as a result.

Colleges of Sanctuary are not separate institutions within the further education sector but existing colleges that have been recognised for their work with refugees and asylum seekers.

The idea was born of the City of Sanctuary movement introduced in Sheffield in 2005 - and many Schools of Sanctuary and Universities of Sanctuary now exist across the UK.

Currently, there are just five Colleges of Sanctuary but that could be about to change, as the five colleges already recognised have set up an FE-specific application and, in December 2020, the umbrella groups behind the City of Sanctuary published the first official resource pack for FE, outlining the process colleges must go through.

Seeking Sanctuary

Becoming a College of Sanctuary requires colleges to demonstrate that they are doing three key things: learning about what it means to be seeking sanctuary; embedding concepts of welcome, safety and inclusion; and sharing that vision within the local community and beyond.

While that might sound daunting, Jamie Morgan-Green, community hub manager at Halesowen College in the West Midlands, says colleges may already be meeting some of the requirements without realising it.

“A lot of colleges will be doing a lot of these things already,” he notes. “It’s just that perhaps they haven’t necessarily thought about this group of individuals in this way before. It’s all about making sure these students have got the same opportunities as anybody else.”

Vivien Caparros, head of school at Preston’s College, agrees and suggests that colleges should carry out an audit of what is in place already to help understand how much - or little - they may need to do next (see box, right). Once this is done, leaders can then identify gaps in support by talking specifically to students about what they would like to see introduced; from that, an action plan can be put in place.

This may sound like more work at a time when workloads are already high, but Caparros encourages others to consider the benefits, such as boosting colleges’ role in their communities - something she has witnessed first hand. “Preston is a very big city and we have some very deprived wards here,” she says. “The support we give to our Esol [English for speakers of other languages] learners is targeted to Esol and Esol asylum seekers, but the college provides support in different guises all the way across the college community. It’s all about providing for your community to help the area and each other to prosper.”

At Preston’s, a key focus is on removing barriers to education for asylum seekers, such as paying for bus passes, childcare places, breakfast and lunch.

Caparros says that, alongside the practical support, staff also take the time to talk to students to understand their journey to England and what their life was like in their home country.

“When you start to listen, you appreciate the traumas that some of our asylum-seeker learners have gone through,” she says. “For example, a fire alarm can be a trigger for some of the asylum-seeker learners. Those are the types of things you have to think about.”

Erika Walkington, schools hub manager at Halesowen College, agrees that it is only by making time for conversations that staff can understand the best ways to help these students - and adds that this has been particularly important during the pandemic. “Throughout lockdown, we were really careful with the Esol students that no one slipped through the net,” she says.

“Some of them are more vulnerable, some are under the care of the local authority, so we made sure we checked in with them daily, even during the holidays.”

Distrust of institutions

The type of support that students require will vary. While, for some, it might mean ensuring they have access to the technology needed to participate in remote learning, for others it is about helping them to understand cultural differences between their home and the UK, and how institutions operate here.

“We have quite a large cohort of Esol teenage learners and it’s just small things we need to consider, like us recognising that the police, for example, in their own country aren’t necessarily people to whom you go for help,” Caparros explains.

To support students with this, the college arranged a visit from their local police force so that learners could get a better understanding of the role of the police in the UK. Other external agencies can offer support, too, she adds. The local Red Cross has offered Preston’s staff awareness training; NHS staff have offered latent tuberculosis testing on site; and The Children’s Society comes in to offer counselling.

The college also teamed up with Lancashire County Council to host an event for businesses to give them an understanding of the difference between a refugee and an asylum seeker, and to break down the misconceptions that might lead to unemployment for those students.

Challenging attitudes

However, Morgan-Green points out that there may be misconceptions within colleges themselves that need addressing as well: students often have strong views about refugees and asylum seekers that they’ve inherited from family and friends.

To help challenge those attitudes, staff at Halesowen College came up with an activity to make everyone more aware of the reality of an asylum seeker’s journey to the UK. They gave staff and students a backpack with a few essential items and asked them to take a metaphorical “refugee journey”.

Participants were asked to make decisions as they “travelled” through European cities, using paper chains to represent the miles they had covered. “We wanted to represent just how far people have travelled to be educated at our college,” says Walkington. “It helped bring it home to look back at the troubles that people have been through.

“We also could then use it as an opportunity to actually show the benefit to society that asylum seekers and refugees can bring in terms of our diversity and what they can go on to contribute.”

And these students can contribute a lot, says Caparros, particularly once they become more confident in their English language skills. “One of the things that comes across is how the learners are so desperate to be part of the wider college.

“They love coming to college because they can often feel quite isolated in their home environment,” she says.

Morgan-Green agrees and says that, at Halesowen, Esol students are more willing to get involved in college life as a whole - his college recently received 30 applications from asylum seekers and refugees to become student ambassadors.

“We have had Esol students for many, many years - and they always seemed to be this distant group that existed within college, separate from our traditional offer,” he says. “By nature of the fact they’re studying to learn English, they’re naturally a bit isolated sometimes. [But] the more we did Colleges of Sanctuary activities within college, the more this group of students just started to participate.”

Becoming a College of Sanctuary therefore offers benefits not only to refugee students but to the college as a whole. And for Caparros, there is another reason to undertake the process. She believes it gets to the heart of the human connection that is inherent in the work done with young people through education - wherever they come from. “We’re all humans at the end of the day - and it’s about supporting everybody,” she says.

Kate Parker is an FE reporter at Tes

*Names have been changed in this article to protect people’s anonymity

This article originally appeared in the 19 February 2021 issue under the headline “Finding refuge in college life”