With Brexit set to cost Britain’s already struggling universities billions of pounds thanks to the inevitable drop in student numbers and loss of EU funding, it is worth remembering that even as Home Secretary Theresa May’s hard line, bullying, and bigoted stance on immigration often saw education as an expedient target.
Adamant that foreign students should be counted as part of immigration figures, she repeatedly sought to ‘crack down’ on language schools and student visas. Her efforts culminated with the Upper Tribunal for immigration and asylum declaring in March that tens of thousands of students had been wrongfully deported under her watch.
As many as 48,000 students were deported from the United Kingdom suddenly and without legal recourse, with May and the Home Office arguing that they had been part of a mass scheme to defraud English language tests. But when the government was finally taken to court over the issue, the tribunal found that ‘The evidence adduced on behalf of the Secretary of State emerged paled and heavily weakened by the examination to which it was subjected’.
Neither May, the Home Office, nor ETS, the US firm responsible for administering the tests, provided suitable evidence that fraud had been committed. Indeed ETS failed to provide the tribunal with any evidence whatsoever, a fact which President Honourable Mr Justice McCloskey described as ‘mildly astonishing’. In conclusion the tribunal stated ‘The legal burden of proof falling on the Secretary of State has not been discharged. The Appellants are clear winners’.
Now it has emerged that in the summer of 2015, Theresa May in her role as Home Secretary fought to discriminate against the education rights of under-16s. Her plan was to force schools to check passports before accepting new pupils, with the children of illegal immigrants to be ‘deprioritised’ and sent to the bottom of admissions lists. This runs counter to UK law, which maintains that children under 16 are entitled to an education regardless of their parents’ circumstances.
The move was blocked thanks to then Education Secretary Nicky Morgan, who wrote to David Cameron expressing her ‘profound concerns’ over the Home Office’s plans. She wrote ‘I have concerns about the practical and presentational issues of applying our strong position on illegal migrants to the emotive issue of children’s education. These cover deprioritising illegal migrants in the schools admissions process, and carrying out immigration checks through schools’.
Morgan added ‘the checks would need to be processed and verified in time to make any changes (i.e. withdrawing a place from an illegal migrant and giving that place to another child) before the start of the school term. This would destabilise the admissions process’. The Department for Education meanwhile worried that May’s proposals would exacerbate segregation and increase the risk of radicalisation within schools, thereby endangering children’s safety.
In response to the leak, Shadow Education Secretary Angela Rayner described May’s proposals as ‘a terrible idea. Denying innocent children because of the circumstances of their parents the right to a good education is disgusting – it’s not a British value that we have. And of course, one in eight UK nationals don’t have a passport either, so it’s completely impractical’.
Chief Inspector of Schools Sir Michael Wilshaw said that he was ‘amazed and shocked’ by the proposals, noting that ‘Schools shouldn’t be used for border control – that’s the job of the border agencies’. And Liberal Democrat MP John Pugh for once summed up the mood, saying ‘There is just so much wrong with this grubby little idea’.
