Ukraine – One year on

A year ago Russia illegally invaded Ukraine and the British people have given refuge to over 150,000 Ukrainians including thousands of children.

Ukrainian children in the UK have been given the same access to education as a UK citizen. Attending school is vital to help newly arrived children integrate as quickly as possible into the communities where they now live and wherever possible, they’ll be offered a place in schools in the local area.

If there aren’t any places available, the local authority will use its ‘in-year fair-access’ procedure, which allows schools to admit vulnerable children, including those from Ukraine, even if a school is already technically full.

At the start of the 2022/23 school year over 20,000 school places – around 92% of all applications – had been offered to children arriving from Ukraine. Local authorities are continuing work with families to make sure every Ukrainian child gets a suitable school place offer as soon as possible.

Some families fleeing war in Ukraine haven’t applied for a school place. This may be because they are learning remotely through the Ukrainian online education platform set up by the Ukrainian government.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Education and Science (MoES) has also published the Ukrainian curriculum to support Ukrainian refugees and those children displaced by the conflict.

Whilst schools should continue to prioritise delivering their usual curriculum, they may also want to share these Ukrainian educational materials with Ukrainian pupils and families joining the school. These resources should be used to complement pupils’ education, for example, for use at home or in supplementary schools. They should not be used to replace schools’ usual curriculum.