Last night about 100 people gathered at the House of Lords to urge peers to vote against the proposal to segregate asylum-seeking children in accommodation centres away from mainstream schools. Over 10 Members of the Lords attended and most stayed for the whole two-hour meeting. The meeting was called by the No School Apartheid, an initiative of mothers and other carers to oppose this legislation. Teachers and head teachers from many schools and nurseries spoke forcefully and movingly about the successful integration of refugee and asylum-seeking children in their schools, and the benefits it had brought to the whole school. They unequivocally rejected Home Secretary Blunkett’s claims that their schools are "swamped".

Others described their own experience as refugees and as the children of refugees, including the horrendous conditions of detention; mothers described how mixing with children from different backgrounds contributes to children’s education in compassion and anti-racism; children and young people spoke about not wanting to be separated from their friends; doctors and other professionals described the damaging effects of segregating children; others expressed concern at how this measure would fuel racism against all Black people. Several peers acknowledged that the testimony they were hearing was extremely impressive and the Bishop of Portsmouth said "This meeting is very, very important and it’s got round the place that it’s happening." Below are short extracts from contributions.

Kay Chapman, mother of two and co-ordinator of No School Apartheid
When we started we found a lot of people had been protesting but the nitty gritty work we did of speaking to other parents and calling schools brought out into the public how strongly parents, teachers and head teachers feel – they are furious and want to speak out about it. Our campaigning starting with parents, teachers and other carers who have children’s welfare most at heart has also galvanised some of the charities and bigger organisations to actually come together . . . The government proposals are not about resources – they are just about to spend billions on bombing Iraq and we want that money in our communities. We don’t want people killed and then people would have to be seeking asylum all over the world.

Andy Knowles, Head teacher, Hampstead School
In Norway I saw a very old dilapidated block of flats which was a refugee camp – it was totally isolated from the rest of the community, no facilities, no resources, and very unhappy. There was an awful atmosphere in this village. Two years ago my school was contacted by a school near there, to ask us to help them in the re-integration of the pupils into their schools, because in Norway that system [similar to what the UK government wants to introduce with this Bill] had been failing those students for a number of years. They are desperately unhappy about the situation and are now actively working with schools like our own to see if they can help that situation.

Caroline Millar, parent governor of Morrison County Primary School, Liverpool
I cannot bear for my children to be told that everyone is the same, feels the same, deserves the same, except this group of people called refugees or asylum seekers. I think it’s extremely dangerous for our children, our local children, to see a group of children as being somehow different, being put in a different place and educated separately. It goes against the whole message they’re getting that we are all human beings and we all deserve equal dignity and equal treatment.

Burbuqe Bakalli Sejdiu, refugee from Kosovo
For so many years I have been so grateful to this country for saving my life and giving me the chance to have two beautiful and healthy children. . . Most asylum seekers are civilians, and come from both sides of the same war . . . Remember: asylum seekers’ children, they’ve just arrived from the war. They have lost dearest ones, they’ve seen massacres, they made it to the borders, they are supposed to feel safe. Imagine, all of them in one accommodation centre. Or are you planning to build separate accommodation centres for different countries? I can give you beautiful examples of schools here with refugees from different sides of the once war zones, where children are so much integrated in their new lives, new classmates, so they don’t even notice or even know who is from where, or if once their parents were on the same or on different sides.

Lynne Manton, Headteacher, Kingsgate Primary School
Perhaps everywhere in the world that there’s a war, we probably have someone from there. Why are you wanting to punish the children? Even if they only come to my school for six months, while you sort out whether their case is just or fair, surely they deserve those six months somewhere where they can be happy.

Rowenna Davis, student, Hampstead School
I’m writing a play with a Kosovan refugee. It was his idea. When I help him, I realise that he is allowing me to know about his experiences, and I benefit from that more than he does. It’s not a charity case. It’s actually my benefit.

Brigid Jackson-Dooley, Headteacher, Cleves Primary School, Newham
My school is enriched by having diversity. It’s not a problem, it’s not a difficulty, it’s an opportunity. . . As children, we get one chance at it. We get one chance at being a five-year-old, a six-year-old, a seven, an eight, a nine-year-old. As an adult we get many more opportunities.

Marion Rosen, Headteacher, Star Primary School, Newham
More than one-fifth of my children are refugees or asylum seekers and 42 languages are spoken. Children learn English quickly because they’re in the playground, and this helps the parents too. You can come into my playground and you’ll find it very difficult to pick out who the asylum seeker children are. If you’re going to build state-of-the-art schools – the government is talking about the full range of national curriculum and OFSTED inspections – you will need science labs, gyms, teaching resources. If the government is talking about spending millions of pounds, these millions of pounds must be available to further support our schools and these children in their communities. . . .

Richard Solly, Churches Commission for Racial Justice
CCRJ speaks for the churches on matters of racism, and some matters of refugee and asylum policy . . . School is the most important stable source of security, it’s the beginning of the journey back into normal life, and the whole family finds a community that they can be part of. For the children, having fun, having friends, laughing, having everyday experiences are very important for wholeness. . . . In Australia by contrast, where asylum seekers are kept segregated from the rest of the population, children are increasingly attempting to harm themselves.

Dr Felicity de Zulueta, Consultant psychiatrist
I see hundreds of asylum seekers and refugees . . . the idea that children can learn anything in detention centres is totally unscientific and completely mad. Many come with traumatic symptoms and suicidal and violent behaviour. They witness their parents suffering. This will affect their brains. Children who are traumatised can’t speak, the speech area in their brains actually shuts down. So imagine trying to learn English in an environment like that. You’re disrupting the attachment with the parents, which will create a whole group of people who will be violent, traumatised and disabled and will not be able to fit into our society, those who have the luck to stay here.

Jenny McLeish, Maternity Alliance
. . . there can be no doubt that incarcerating innocent women and babies in institutions is not only morally wrong but also, in human terms, extremely dangerous. . . . in detention centres . . . a woman was eating so little that she couldn’t produce enough breast milk to feed her baby . . . one centre had a policy of only giving out three nappies at a time, so mothers had to queue up two or three times a day; the mother of a bottle-fed baby had to queue up every couple of hours day and night. Proposed accommodation centres will be a cross between detention centres and emergency accommodation – effectively open door prisons with doors opening onto fields. Women and children will be trapped there, cut off from community support, from normal health care, and even without the power to make the most basic decisions about daily life, such as what food to eat and to give their children.

Sonali Naik, barrister, Chair, Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants
I represent people who come here because their children are being segregated in the countries they come from. Polish Roma children in Poland are segregated in special schools! Some of the real victims of segregating asylum seekers from mainstream schools are the minds of the children in those mainstream schools. What kind of message does it send out in terms of welcome, in terms of anti-racism? It seems like an appalling message to children whose minds are at a most formative stage to say, "Some people belong and some people do not, and those who do not belong are primarily and essentially Black people." That is a very dangerous message.

Shabbazz Chapman, aged 10, Kingsgate Primary School
I thought about what it would be like if my friends were not in my school, and I thought it would be very different. I don’t think that the children should go into detention centres because all they want is to be with other children and make new friends. Basically they are teaching us not to care about people and I don’t think that’s right.

Letty Nimo, aged 10, Kingsgate Primary School
When I’m with my friends it’s a lot different from reading about it in a book. When I’m at my friends’ house I learn about the way they are and what languages they speak and what food they eat.

Niki Adams, Legal Action for Women
They don’t admit that the conditions in detention centres are tortuous. And on that basis every single day that a child spends in a detention centre or an accommodation centre, which is fundamentally the same thing, is a disaster. Every child’s life is of equal value. I would not let my child stay there one day and I don’t think any child should be there, whether it’s three months or six months or any time at all. Even just one week can have a very detrimental effect on children’s health and well-being and safety.

Dr Lizzy Scott, Campaign to Stop Arbitrary Detention at Yarl’s Wood
In Yarl’s Wood I saw a 12-year-old Kosovan boy who’d been in the country two years . . . I asked him about the education at Yarl’s Wood. A lot is made of how wonderful the facilities are. But he said he didn’t receive the same education that they do in mainstream school. When he was locked in Yarl’s Wood he started getting nightmares again, he woke up crying in the mornings, he’d stopped eating . . . You just have to look at NASS to see how much more expensive it is to set up and maintain a parallel system to realise that it will be the same for accommodation centres and education in accommodation centres.

Jeanette X, refugee from Uganda
In detention everything goes worse. I couldn’t find anyone to speak my language. I didn’t understand English at all. I stayed there one week but I was completely distressed and lost hope. I tried to commit suicide. How can you think for a mother and children to stay for a month or more? It’s real punishment . . . very cold, the food is not good, even the queue for food was so long, you would give up, and go back with nothing. I was checked by women in uniform, they looked like soldiers. Every time they came, you were scared. It’s me today, it’s you tomorrow, it’s someone else . . .

Michael Kalmanovitz, Payday men’s network
I am a father, and the grandson of a refugee. This Bill promotes heartlessness and division. We don’t want our children to be trained to tell other children there’s no room at the inn.

Soraya Walton, Lye, Black Country
The Ahmadi family were forcibly removed in August. These children have been put under so much strain and stress, nobody seems to be bothered about what’s happening to them. They are now in a detention camp in Germany. If it’s good enough for these children it should be good enough for my children, and I’m afraid it’s not. These children have a good Black Country accent, they enjoy school, which is more than I can say about my own children. They want to come home. If we cannot protect people without a voice, what on earth are we calling ourselves, a democracy, a civilised country?

Pascale Vassie, Coordinator, Notre Dame Refugee Centre
What is being proposed is not for children to be educated in accommodation centres but for children not to be educated. They’re going to be in constantly daily changing classes, with the entire class made up of children who’ve experienced the trauma of exile. Anyone with a child will know how difficult a child finds it when a classmate moves away. Imagine a class where children are disappearing every week . . . what is the child going to have to shut down in order to deal with that? In Harmondsworth Detention Centre I was told that although the children would not be legally detained, that they wouldn’t be allowed to go out, because it was too complicated, required too many security staff. The accommodation centres are intended to be open centres. But if it’s too complicated what will the reality be?

Claire Glasman WinVisible, women with visible and invisible disabilities
Many asylum seekers have disabilities, arising from war, rape and violence, yet they’re barred from claiming disability benefits. No-one hardly speaks about it.

Cristel Amiss, Black Women’s Rape Action Project
We work with women who have fled rape and other torture. It’s been estimated that 50% of women coming to seek asylum in this country are rape survivors. We are very concerned about the devastating impact the Accommodation, Induction and Removal Centres would have on traumatised rape survivors and their families. And now we have written to the Lords again opposing the drastic reduction of legal rights to appeal. Where an immigration official decides a woman’s application is "clearly unfounded" she would be deported and could only appeal from the place where she was tortured. We are pressing for women who are raped in other countries to get the same standard of treatment all rape survivors are entitled to receive.

E. Heffernon, Committee to Defend Asylum Seekers
This bill is not about learning English. This Bill is about segregating asylum seekers from society so that they can be easily deported, regardless of whether they meet the criteria of the Geneva Convention. The Ahmadi family have not been easily deported, because they went to a local school where they met local parents and became part of the community that has fought to protect them . . . Hadia Ahmadi speaks fluent English with a Lye accent and she did that after two months because she went to a local school and mixed with kids. She had spent 10 months in Germany, in an accommodation centre, not a detention centre, and she learned not one word of German.

Sara Callaway, Black Women for Wages for Housework
I grew up when people were fighting to end segregated schools in the US. It took a mass movement and they had to bring in the military for Black kids to attend mixed schools. It was the same in South Africa. Blatant racism is what it’s about. Much of the wealth here has been produced by us, immigrants and refugees, many generations back before we came to live here.

No School Apartheid! Presentation at the Transport & General Workers Union (T&G) fringe meeting at the Labour Party Conference, Blackpool, 1 October 2002.

Sample letter from a school to the Lords

Not in the name of mothers, teachers and other carers! No school apartheid!
Mothers and other parents and carers at Kingsgate Primary School in Camden, London, are circulating the following letter urging their children's school to oppose the government plan to detain children seeking asylum so they can no longer attend school with other children.  We strongly object to this segregation... more on this

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

"The Way I see it" The new apartheid
Kay Chapman argues for pupil integration
KILBURN TIMES July 3 2002