NEST is a full-time educational provision for asylum seeker and refugee young people, aged 15-19 years. This provision is unique nationally and Nottingham is rightly proud of the impact it has had on the lives of some of our most vulnerable young people as they begin their new lives in Nottingham.
The post-16 element was launched with two years’ DfE funding in September 2018, to ensure rapid access to an appropriate education for unaccompanied asylum-seeking young people who were at safeguarding risk due to lack of availability of provision. This was identified as a national issue, as well as the urgency to meet the young person’s complex needs (educationally, mentally and socially).
In the 2020/21 academic year NEST expanded to become a 50-place site and now incorporates the City’s Year 11 EAL new arrivals provision; this element has been in existence in the City for several years as a response to the difficulties schools face in providing an appropriate curriculum and meeting the needs of new arrivals with little English in their final year of schooling. Previously, some students from the Year 11 provision moved through to NEST at the end of Year 11.
We have a very stable staff team – many of the teachers have been in post since the beginning of the programme. All are specialists in EAL; we have a mainstream English teacher, a former music teacher and 2 former LA EAL consultants amongst the staff team. Our staff team has been strengthened since amalgamation with HHE; we now have specialists in science, maths, humanities and MFL. Other areas of expertise include counselling, FE/careers/work experience and equality and diversity.
