Education of asylum seeker applicant children in England

Department for Education

The Department for Education activity is an estimate of the department’s annual spend on the education of asylum seeker children who are of compulsory school age in England – i.e. of primary and secondary ages – for the first 12 months after their asylum application is lodged. It is important to note that there is not a specific budget for this spend. The DfE provides funding to schools in England (via local authorities in the case of maintained schools) through the core schools budget and the pupil premium grant, a total of approximately £45bn per year. The DfE makes an estimate of how much of this total is, in effect, allocated to schools’ budgets due to asylum seeker children in their first 12 months in the country being on roll. All pupils on roll at a school attract funding to their school in the same way, irrespective of whether or not they are asylum seeker children. All the spending being estimated takes place domestically in English schools. The figure for 2019 is not yet available; this activity will be updated in due course.