I am delighted in this Insight piece to share the outcomes of a project which I have been working on in collaboration with Refugee Education UK (REUK). The project title is: Sustainable transformative inclusive refugee education: steps towards a changed policy narrative or STRIVE for short.

STRIVE mobilises research expertise (PI McIntyre), professional expertise (REUK), lived experience expertise experience (REUK’s young ambassadors) to fundamentally advance the policy narrative through planned strategic advocacy and engagement with decision-makers in the sector.

REUK and I have worked together on different areas of work over the past few years and STRIVE is one step in our shared long term aim to shift the policy narrative from short-term, ‘crisis response’ to sustainable long-term planning for inclusive policies and practices for refugee children which we argue will yield multiple positive effects for society, including the promotion of tolerant, peaceful and secure communities. STRIVE mobilises research expertise (PI McIntyre), professional expertise (REUK), lived experience expertise experience (REUK’s young ambassadors) to fundamentally advance the policy narrative through planned strategic advocacy and engagement with decision-makers in the sector.

For this to be effective there needs to be a change in policy to support practice in schools. Thus, to achieve this sustainable and inclusive model of refugee education and ensure that refugees, communities and societies benefit from it, the policy narrative must shift alongside individual institutional responses. The UK government has historically adopted a restrictive and often hostile stance on refugees and asylum seekers (Pinson and Arnot, 2010) and refugee education policy tends to be characterised by inhibiting refugees’ ability to plan for the future (Gateley, 2015). This is a narrative that has persisted over the last decade as the Department for Education has not updated its guidance on refugee education since 2009 despite the many significant events since then, including in Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine, and the current tragic events unfolding in the Gaza and Israel.

Navigating this policy environment to successfully engage with policymakers and stakeholders on refugee education requires careful and considered planning and implementation. This was the core of the STRIVE project.

Through a series of focus groups and individual interviews, STRIVE engaged with key stakeholder groups including: young people with lived experience of forced migration; teaching staff; teacher educators, representatives from teaching unions; CEOs of Multi Academy Trusts; representatives from Local Authorities and Virtual School head teachers; and third-sector organisations supporting refugees and asylum seekers.

From this, we have developed briefing documents (a policy brief and summary report) which synthesise our stakeholder perspectives of the changes that are needed to bring about inclusion of refugees in educational policy and practice.

We hope you will find them interesting. Please feel free to share with your networks.

Through STRIVE we are taking steps towards a changed narrative from refugee education as a crisis response towards a sustainable inclusive approach which acknowledges that migration is and will continue to be a global phenomenon affecting local communities and the schools within them. The project drew on different strata of regional and sector policymakers in preparation for next steps of strategic advocacy targeting those working at national decision-making level in educational and other policy sectors affecting the lived experience of young refugee and asylum-seekers.

Through conducting the STRIVE project, we saw the breadth of need for policy change and the role of our partnership to facilitate this discussion. Ultimately we had to limit our focus to national policy changes affecting secondary education policy in England. However, further research and specific policy recommendations are needed across the devolved nations and across levels of education from early years education to higher education.

Note on contributor

Joanna McIntyre is Professor of Education at the University of Nottingham and the PI of both the HERE (Hub for Education for Refugees in Europe) and STRIVE projects.