Safeguarding and students under 18

Placing students under eighteen is a normal part of this work: A-level entry, foundation years and summer schools all take them. This is what that means in practice.

Who this covers

Anybody under eighteen on the day they arrive in the United Kingdom, and anybody over eighteen who is at risk for another reason. Where age is uncertain the younger assumption is made.

A parent or guardian is part of it

From the first conversation. A meeting with a student under eighteen happens with a parent or guardian present or copied in, and that includes messages: we do not carry on a private correspondence with a young person about their future.

Where a parent cannot be there, an appointed guardian can be, and we ask who that is in writing.

What we tell you about the destination

A university or a school taking a student under eighteen has duties of its own, and different institutions discharge them very differently. Before an application is made we tell you what the institution provides: what the accommodation arrangements are for under-eighteens, whether a UK guardian is required, what supervision looks like outside teaching hours, and who at the institution is responsible.

Where a course does not take students under eighteen, we say so before it is on a shortlist rather than after an offer.

Guardianship

Most British schools and many universities require a student under eighteen to have a guardian in the United Kingdom - somebody who can attend a meeting, sign a form, and be reached at two in the morning. We explain what the institution requires and what a guardianship service does. We are not one, and we do not take a fee for recommending one.

What we hold about a young person

As little as the application needs, and no more. The privacy policy applies in full and with a shorter retention: an enquiry from somebody under eighteen that goes nowhere is deleted after twelve months rather than two years.

If somebody is at risk

Anybody with a concern about a young person we deal with - a student, a parent, a school, a member of staff - should say so to the person named at the foot of this page. It will be acted on the day it is raised.

Where a concern is that somebody is in immediate danger, the emergency services in that country come first and this office second. We will cooperate with any statutory body, in Britain or here, and we will not wait to be compelled.

The people who do this work

Advisers who deal with students under eighteen are told what this policy requires and are told to raise anything that troubles them rather than to decide for themselves whether it matters. Nobody is ever the only person who knows.