I’m part of a mothers lead campaign to stop the government’s proposals to segregate children seeking asylum away from schools. We’re very glad to be invited by the T&G to speak at this meeting today and for a chance to be in touch with other organisations ready to connect with grassroots groups as ours.

I am a single mother of two daughters in a primary school in Kilburn, London, with children of 30 different nationalities, a number of whom have fled war zones. 60% of the children are on free school meals – including my own. With other mothers in our area and across the country, we are pressing our schools and nursery schools to write to the Lords urging them to oppose government plans to keep children away from mainstream education as proposed in the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Bill. We went to the Lords because they were debating the Bill at the time and we thought there was more chance that they’d oppose the Bill. They are voting on amendments to the Bill on 9 October so with the support of Legal Action for Women, mothers are co-ordinating a Briefing and lobby of the House of Lords, Tuesday 8 October 6pm, Moses Room – hosted by Lord Beaumont of the Green Party - See the leaflet for a range of speakers.

We strongly believe that all children benefit from growing up in an integrated environment where they can make friends and be educated with children from all over the world. These are invaluable relationships which must be treasured. There is no better anti-racist education, so vital for a caring society, than to grow up in a multi-racial school ready to defend its most vulnerable pupils. There is no better way to learn first hand that no one needs, wants, or deserves less than yourself?

The setting up of an apartheid system for some children (unprecedented in this country) would undermine this work. Separate is never equal – many of us opposed, and celebrated the end of, separate education in South Africa. We don’t want it here.

It seems to us - and we hope teachers, in particular here today will speak about this - that the removal of asylum-seeking children from schools goes hand in hand with the destruction of multi-dimensional education. Many parents, students and teachers are angry that the National Curriculum forces schools to prioritise the skills that industry wants and to drop fundamental subjects like art and music. Our children have as much right as public school kids to a real education, not just job training.

Education is not only top down. Every carer and educator knows that children teach each other as much as they are taught. Multi-ethnic schools are part of a well-rounded education, the kind of creative and caring curriculum that most teachers went into the job wanting to teach, and parents want for our children. We’ve also read in the papers that the extra money schools can get when a lot of new children arrive, benefits all the children in the school by making "welcoming and caring" an integral principle of the school. That’s what we call education for living, and for peace.

And we have seen from the experience of children with disabilities which Blunket should well know about, the horrendous impact of segregation.

Why we went to school:

We started going to schools after the government accused asylum-seeking children, children in trouble, of "swamping" schools. Every teacher I spoke to said it’s a lie that asylum seekers are "swamping" schools, and stressed that these children make a positive contribution to the communities they live in and that schools would be poorer without them

And we understood the real intention behind this measure when we heard David Blunket tell Parliament that "It is virtually impossible to drag a family away from a neighbourhood school.  Local papers run local campaigns to stop people being removed." (Hansard, 11 June 2002). Its clear it’s not a question of resources but of dividing the community, undermining people’s chances of getting support and making it easier for the govt to deport people regardless of their situation. If this Clause to segregate asylum seeking children is scrapped, it will seriously undermine the whole Bill and strengthen the movement against so-called "accommodation centres", really detention centres, and dispersal, and strengthen the demand for full re-instatement of benefits so people can live where they want. Detention and refusal of benefits for destitute people are very dangerous precedents. Who knows when it will be used for any and all of the rest of us?

We’re calling for teachers, and any other workers, not to co-operate in any way with teaching in these detention centres. If the government can’t get the staff they’ll have to send the children to mainstream schools. It would be good to hear how people here today think this can happen.

Getting letters:

I wanted to say briefly how we actually went about getting letters written to the Lords. We started with some mothers drafting a letter to our school. We then asked other parents to sign it. The response was generally supportive. Many parents in our schools are from immigrant, refugee and asylum seeking backgrounds and immediately understood the increase in racism, discrimination and general bullying that would come from this law. (We also found out who the racist parents were.) But many Black and immigrant parents were afraid to sign, though they were entirely with us. This witch-hunting of asylum seekers has made those quite legally here nervous that they too will be witch-hunted. In other words, the government’s ‘swamping’ policies have whipped up racism and made people of colour live in fear.

We went to friends and family, retired teachers, local educational authorities, people who work with refugee families, unions, councillors, priests and other religious leaders and church groups. It helped enormously taking the time to speak directly with people. We also went directly to teachers and head teachers in other schools across London, and contacts in Newcastle, Sheffield, Bristol, Liverpool and Glasgow. Almost every school and individual said they would write.

Getting together with the community

We found we were far from alone in our views. Teachers and heads have been complaining about this Bill, and not only in private. But people were not getting together. For example, the local union rep in our school had been doing something about the Bill but hadn’t come to us as parents in the playground to tell us or ask for support. I think that’s a mistake – parents do feel very strongly about this and many issues. Led by mothers, our campaign has made visible the grassroots opposition to this measure and brought people together -- across schools, across boroughs and across the divide between parents and teachers. And it’s having a great impact – several Lords have indicated they’re getting a lot of letters – and Baroness Anelay told the Lords " Who can fail to be impressed by the number of teachers and parents who have written to Lords to say how they would welcome children into their schools?"

Summary:

Most communities do not object to asylum seekers. What they object to, which the government and some media then turn against immigrants, is having to compete even further for scarce resources. Those of us who are low income taxpayers are encouraged to blame immigrants for our difficulties. Yet corruption at every level exempts large corporations from paying the taxes they owe which could pay for education, health, affordable housing and other basic needs.

And there’s no lack of money for wars that Britain is involved in, and no lack of will to sell arms to dictatorships and now go bombing and killing Iraqi people. We see that this conference is discussing both the war on Iraq and immigration – but it’s the same issue. There’s no lack of money for wars, no lack of money to bomb countries killing thousands and leaving others homeless and destitute. But when the soldiers have raped women and people have been robbed of their lives and their livelihood and when mothers and children manage to escape, then there is no money to help them. Instead they are detained and deported without regard for their safety or the justice of their case. (80% of displaced people worldwide are women and children; 50% of women claiming asylum have been raped.) We didn’t use to know about these things, we do now.

There is such a thing as society and all our children and their families are part of it, regardless of where they come from. I urge everyone to write to the House of Lords and to the government immediately. And ask them to come to the briefing and lobby of the lords on the 8 October before the Lords vote.

Don't let them decide about our children without hearing from those who have their welfare most at heart.

We want asylum seekers in our schools. Excerpts from contributions to the briefing on the eve of the Nationality, Immigration & Asylum Bill debate, House of Lords, 8 October 02

No Shool Apartheid!
Briefing & lobby House of Lords
6pm Tuesday 8 October

Sample letter from a school to the Lords

Press:
'Heads disgusted at refugee segregation', Times Educational Supplement, 5 July 2002

In defence of asylum Letter published in The Guardian 15 June 2002