English language provision
This section outlines examples of different types of ‘pathway to Higher Education’ English language provision for refugee-background students (RBS), with a particular focus on English for Academic Purposes (EAP)
Common types of provision
Pre-sessional programmes
Free places on pre-sessional (pre-university) academic English programmes. These are generally full-time, formal programmes with in-house assessments at the end, leading on to direct entry to university degree programmes (if the required exit level is achieved)
RefugEAP Programme
RefugEAP Programme of free online EAP classes for refugee background students in the UK. This is a part-time, formal programme with a mixture of in-house assessments and the option of taking an IELTS exam at the end (funded by RefuAid)
Exam preparation courses
Free places on formal exam preparation courses such as IELTS, Cambridge ESOL, Occupational English Test (for requalifying medics) – with external exams potentially funded by RefuAid
Informal provision (e.g. ESOL/EAP)
Free informal English classes (usually general English) based on a variety of possible models, including: being offered directly by the university (e.g. perhaps by staff in the English language teaching centre or via a staff/student volunteering scheme); being offered in partnership with a charity (e.g. local City of Sanctuary branch) ; being offered as part of a TESOL teacher training course such as CELTA or MA TESOL and classes taught by student trainees
Current opportunities in the UK HE context
A great resource to explore what opportunities are currently being offered in the UK context is the Displaced Students Opportunities UK website, which is a portal for sharing and searching for study opportunities to support people with backgrounds of forced displacement in the UK to access HE.
The most effective way to search for ‘pathway to Higher Education’ English language provision on this portal is, in the search filters, for ‘level of study’ select ‘pre-university’, and for ‘type of opportunity’ select ‘English language course’ and ‘preparation for university’. This should bring up all opportunities with an English language learning element (whether fully or partly).
If you are a student, the Displaced Opportunities UK website is an accessible way to find out what opportunities are available to you in the UK. If you work for a provider that offers these sorts of opportunities to refugee-background students, you can set up an account and share your opportunities via this portal. Equally, if your organisation has not yet developed any opportunities of this sort for refugee-background students, the portal provides a useful insight into what other providers are doing in this respect (very useful for providing evidence to managers when advocating for provision to be developed).
As the Displaced Students Opportunities UK website is still in its infancy, it does not have the full range of opportunities uploaded to it yet, so another useful website to refer to I the meantime is its predecessor, the Student Action for Refugees scholarships list (click on the English Language Programmes tab).
RefugEAP Network 