Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance his Department provides to schools on the rights of children with British National (Overseas) status to school places.

All children who live in the UK are eligible for a school place in England irrespective of their nationality.

The UK has offered a new route to full citizenship to British Nationals (Overseas) (BNO(S)) and their dependants. This means that those BN(O) families taking advantage of this offer and moving to the UK will be able to access a state-funded or independent school place for their children on the same basis as every other family in the UK. Those BN(O) families who choose not to avail themselves of our migration offer, and who remain in Hong Kong, will, as now, be able to send their children to the UK to access an independent school place under the UK study visa rules.

Advice to state-funded school admission authorities is contained within the School Admissions Code, which can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-admissions-code--2. We also provide specific advice to admission authorities on the rights of overseas pupils to access a school place on the following website: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/schools-admissions-applications-from-overseas-children.

We sent a bulletin to schools in England on 14 October containing information about changes to the immigration system which said: ‘Schools should continue to offer places to foreign national children who are resident in the United Kingdom.’