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Britain’s schools urged to take in refugee children from Syria

Whole-school issues Pupil wellbeing
Britain’s boarding schools have been challenged to offer at least two free places each to teenage orphaned Syrian refugees. Meanwhile, school leaders across the country are also being urged to act to support Syrian refugees when they arrive.

The first call has come from the head of Saint Felix School in Southwold, Suffolk, after the prime minister agreed earlier this month that Britain would take 20,000 refugees in the next five years.

Fran D’Alcorn, who leads the 2 to 18 private school, which includes boarding facilities for nine to 18-year-olds, said that local authorities will have “an immensely difficult time” placing orphaned refugees in schools and with foster parents or in children’s homes.

She estimates that if all the boarding schools in the independent sector agreed to support this initiative then “up to a thousand vulnerable and desperate children could be given the chance of a new life in this country”.

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