30 yr old school pupil reported to Home Office

[failingatlife]

An asylum seeker pupil at a school in Ipswich is being investigated after claims he is in his 30s. Maybe he is trans age? If he identifies as a teenager then we should respect that and treat him as such, right?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-suffolk-46070239

This happened before with the refugees didn't it?

People expressed concerns that many looked older than they claimed to be and were called racists and bigots and awful names.

If this is true it's very worrying that a grown adult was allowed to undress, and play sports and sit in lessons with other children. That is edge ticket an unchecked adult male in a school when even the parebts can't just walk in.

Effectively

Sorry stupid phone

Sadly, this has happened before, and something needs to be done. 

This has been a real issue for both schools and foster families.

Lots in the Mail....

There's a bit of a connection here with other feminist issues in terms of who influences policy.

In my twenties, I did a lot of work in war zones and spent some time working with children in the ME in my 30s.

As a rule, children from war zones or areas of conflict or poverty look younger than their equivalent in the West. And by quite some way. A lot of it is to do with malnutrition and disrupted food supplies; they don't eat as much protein as they should, so they tend to be smaller, not as much muscle tone etc.

So when the whole thing about refugees and age came about, and the general line was that children from these cultures look older, I was a bit . That's just not my experience at all. A secondary school child would look more like a primary school child, and that went for both sexes.

My feeling is that what we see here are vested interests of some kind writing policy on non-scientific grounds, based on a load of made-up, uninformed bollocks.

What has this got to do with women's rights?

Women's rights include safeguarding. I'd say an adult male pretending to be a child counts.

What has this got to do with women's rights?

Nothing in particular. It is another example of the tribalism of the Left. If the right wing press or right wing politicians raise the issue, which they did, then it can't be true.

I agree packing

We are supoosed to believe they are malnourished and look older for their age as a result when clearly adult muscular bery developed bodies are in front of our very eyes or we are racists.

Well it's like everything isn't it. We pretend we don't see what we see and we don't speak up for fear of being branded "ist" or "phobic" or both . So we allow safeguarding to be completeky disregarded whilst never questioning who and why people would want safe guarding ignored

Good point Lass. I see this alot with regards to the Mail in particular. They report loads of stories about male violence that other papers ignore, they even reported on the obgyn dying the woman's genitals as a prank earlier this week when I didn't see any other british media doing so. But even with photographic evidence anything the Mail says must be ignored.

That is horrendous
He’d Been there since the start of term but I’m guessing everyone was too scared to raise it.
Awful awful. How do they verify ages of refugees? I remember this concern being raised ages ago and it all went quiet...

I heard about this from some secondary school teachers locally a while ago. It’s not a made up Daily Mail thing. The young men at their school aren’t hopping on the privileged ‘trans’ bandwagon. They are trying to make a life in the UK whatever it takes basically.
But this is absolutely yet another reason against mixed sex toileting and changing facilities in schools.

And paedophiles have posed as school pupils to groom young victims and their families.

This was a case from Portsmouth.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2478350/Paedophile-who-posed-as-school-pupil-admits-abucting-girl.html

I think the Portsmouth Head Teacher let the rules slide in admitting this adult 'school pupil' - she admitted him to Year 10 mid-year without properly seeing his parent, which would have unmasked the whole fraud - and the result in terms of safeguarding was catastrophic.

Rules matter for safeguarding.

Not sure about age verification. However in my job, many ethnic moinority foreign patients give their Dob as 1/1/19**. Its generally accepted in my NHS board that these are usually fake as births often not recorded in some countries.

Someone asked what's this to do with WR? It's a safeguarding issue imo. There may be an adult male whose history is unknown attending school with minors. Safeguarding is generally of women & children so is a WR issue.

The problem is that paper like the Guardian will never print anything that puts immigrants or refugees in a bad light. Whilst they deserve some credit for this, they need to remember that they will therefore be partly responsible when things go wrong.

Also, why only protect one group? Surely, they should be protecting all groups, including GC women? But no.

Sorry, another Guardian rant...

Two women were sexually assualted in the hospital I work in a couple of years ago. The perpetrator was a refugee. The news stories had little detail other than that a 14 yr old boy had been reported to the children's panel. Locally people were saying he was in his 20s but this could not be proven so he basically got away with it.

However if its fine & dandy for people to self define their gender then why not their age?

You could swear an oath and get it changed on your birth certificate

Not good. Sorry for what may seem a stupid question, but do you have ESL course for migrants in the U.K.?

Only reason I ask is that once that is completed there are usually pathways to other types of learning. Might be a way to avoid possible adults at schools.

I was told of a similar case in Scotland about 20 years ago (a Scottish born and bread 'pupil'), you'd think it couldn't happen now. Not really a feminist issue but still bizarre.

I have a relative who’s a paediatrician... she has been called to treat a refugee boy. She had to refuse because she is untrained to treat adults. I guess you can’t blame individuals for trying to escape war zones but it IS a safeguarding issue.

the general line was that children from these cultures look older

That was a plain, barefaced, brazen lie, and I’m amazed anyone swallowed it.

I would only add there was strong pressure to believe that untruth, for reasons undisclosed. In essence, Packing, I think your feelings about policy are right.

It's refugees not migrants. They won't have that kind of paperwork.

Sorry - that was in reply to Danaquestionseverything

I remember reading about huge problems here in Ireland - in order to safeguard child refugees, if an unaccompanied child turned up no questioning was allowed. The result was grey-haired men presenting as being unaccompanied minors, who couldn't be refused being treated as such.

The naivety of thinking that people don't swap hints online for how to take advantage of systems meant to safeguard children!