To be recognised as a College of Sanctuary, colleges must go through the learn, embed and share sanctuary award processes and demonstrate the fulfilment of ten minimum criteria specific to the Colleges of Sanctuary stream.
LEARN
- Staff Awareness Raising and Training: The college trains and raises awareness about the experiences of people seeking safety in the UK amongst all college staff and leadership. This is used to build sensitivity towards learners seeking sanctuary and build staff expertise to effectively support new arrivals from sanctuary seeking backgrounds.
- Student Learning: The college teaches all students about forced migration and the experiences of people seeking sanctuary to correct misconceptions, reduce prejudice, and foster connection and empathy. This may be through subject-based schemes of work, in tutorials, personal development sessions, workshops, college wide activities and student orientation.
EMBED
- Designated Sanctuary Lead: The college has a designated expert staff team/staff member as a named point of contact for sanctuary seeking students. This contact information is: clearly displayed on a designated webpage for refugee and asylum seeking learners; shared during induction and is present at enrolment days. The designated lead conducts a yearly review of how well the college is serving these students, focusing on their access, progress and overall experience.
- Educational Access: The college seeks to widen access to FE for people seeking sanctuary and has developed activities and processes to ensure learners seeking sanctuary can pursue meaningful education pathways.
- Supportive Environment: The college adapts college provision and practice to ensure learners from sanctuary seeking backgrounds feel safe, can succeed in their studies, receive comprehensive support and can participate in extra activities and enrichment programmes.
- Community Celebration: The college recognises and participates in Refugee Week and similar celebratory events to connect with the wider movement of welcome and show solidarity with people seeking safety.
- Student Engagement: The college enables the participation of all staff and students in welcoming activities, such as befriending and/or exchange activities, community outreach; charitable actions; or acts of solidarity and encourages student ownership and leadership of sanctuary activities.
SHARE
- Public Commitment: The college openly shares its dedication to sanctuary by…
- Signing the City of Sanctuary UK supporting organisation pledge
- Communicating its commitment & how it upholds it with the college community i) in a public space in college, ii) on the website, iii) in other spaces.
- Community Partnerships and Outreach: The college collaborates with local refugee organisations, forums and partner organisations to build a culture of welcome in the local area beyond the college.
- Network Engagement: The college engages with and supports wider sanctuary networks, including their local City of Sanctuary group (if present), other local sanctuary awarded organisations and the FE Colleges of Sanctuary network. This participation helps strengthen and sustain collective efforts to support people seeking sanctuary.
Other things to note
At the bottom of the application, we have long had a section titled:
‘Please identify how people seeking sanctuary have been involved in helping you achieve these principles’.
We want colleges to demonstrate efforts to ‘co-produce’ this process with students and staff with lived experience of (forced) migration. This is in line with City of Sanctuary UK’s values and Theory of Change where we understand that it is not possible to meaningfully develop sanctuary efforts without the voices and contributions of those with lived experience at the heart of shaping and implementing them.
Rather than being a separate criterion colleges should endeavour to have co-production as a cross-cutting priority that can be visible within each criterion. In this section the college can briefly outline the structures, processes or efforts developed to enable this, such as initial focus groups/consultations, a Sanctuary officer role, etc.
For further information on the FE College of Sanctuary minimum criteria, please refer to the application guidance. You can also review the audit tool to identify how you can meet the minimum criteria. For both resources, see the Award Resources Page.
Please note: City of Sanctuary UK recognises that colleges vary widely in their contexts and capacities, and there is no expectation that every FE College of Sanctuary will follow the exact same path or that every college’s application will look the same. The criteria have been developed to ensure the credibility and standardisation of the award, but hopefully with enough flexibility for colleges to be able to devise their own unique pathway. We encourage every college to use this process intentionally to critically review provision and practice and better understand the experiences of and listen to the voices of students seeking sanctuary.