While in Home Office, Theresa May wanted the children of illegal immigrants to be placed at the bottom of the list of school places, according to leaked Cabinet correspondence. The then education secretary Nicky Morgan strongly resistedand was dropped from the Immigration Bill. During the summer of 2015, Ms Morgan wrote twice to David Cameron to express her “profound concerns” about the Home Office plan for schools.
“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,” she wrote. “These cover deprioritising illegal migrants in the schools admissions process and carrying out immigration checks through schools.”
“The overall effect of a deprioritisation measure would be to concentrate children of illegal migrants in the least popular schools in any area, jeopardising our increasingly important focus on tackling both segregation and extremism, and with consequent impacts on the children of British nationals who attend the schools,” she wrote.
“Aside from the impact on ordinary parents, there is also a risk to children’s safety. Introducing these checks could lead to some children not being registered for school because of real or perceived fear of deportation. Leaving aside the fact that these young people will not receive a decent education, this is a safeguarding risk – we have real concerns that children out of school may be at greater risk of radicalisation or other harms.”
She said the plan “would reinforce negative stereotypes of our party, squandering the unprecedented opportunity to capture the centre ground, that the election of Jeremy Corbyn has given us”.
“It shows that actually Theresa May was not just considering it, her department was pushing it and I’m deeply concerned about it,”Shadow education secretary Angela Rayner. “I think it’s 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.”
By Premji
