‘Schoolboy’ exposed by pupils is adult asylum seeker
Man who spent six weeks in class with 15-year-olds found to be Iranian who has attended university
A HOME OFFICE investigation has found an adult asylum seeker posed as a schoolboy and was placed in a classroom with 15-year-old children.
A new inquiry has been launched to try to establish how the man, described by pupils as 30 years old, managed to spend six weeks as a Year 11 student at Stoke High School in Ipswich, Suffolk.
The former pupil, originally from the Middle East, now faces being deported after an official report established he was, in fact, over 18.
He can now be identified as Siavash, understood to be originally from Iran. A fellow pupil posted a picture of him online with the message: “How’s there a 30-year-old man in our maths class?”
Other pictures, apparently from the man’s Facebook account, showed him with a moustache, facial stubble, and drinking from a bottle of beer. The now-deleted profile said he was an architecture student at the Islamic Azad University in Abadan, Iran, before living in Erfurt, Germany.
Some parents were so concerned when suspicions were raised that they removed their children from school. Others claimed pupils were better than immigration authorities at assessing an asylum seeker’s age.
The scandal has prompted calls for the Home Office to review how it assesses the age of asylum seekers who claim to be children.
The school suspended the man, believed to be 6ft 1in tall, and reported him to the Home Office which launched an inquiry.
Although the Home Office refused to reveal how old he is now believed to be, it is understood from sources that he is being officially treated as an adult.
A Home Office spokesman said: “We are fully committed to safeguarding children and are looking into the circumstances of this case to understand how it was handled. Age-disputed cases remain a challenging area of work in which no single assessment technique, or combination of techniques, is likely to determine an individual’s age with precision.
“In the absence of clear and credible documentary evidence, Home Office staff must rely on physical appearance and demeanour to make an initial assessment on whether a person claiming to be a child is under 18.
“If an individual is assessed to be under 18, but subsequent concerns about their age are raised – for example by a school – we will act quickly to reconsider the case.”
Sandy Martin, the Labour MP for Ipswich, said: “The Home Office needs to make sure that they are not sending people who are over-age to school. They have the means to do this and they need to do it.”
Desmond Newby, 51, who kept daughters Jamie, 15, and Alicia, 13, away from classes until the man was removed, said: “I’m ashamed both for the school and the Government for allowing this to happen. They have both failed to protect our children. I can’t say what this guy’s motives are, but it is a serious safeguarding issue.”
Speaking outside his school with the permission of his mother, Rhidien Bumstead, 11, said: “It was really scary at first because you don’t know if they’re going to be a really bad person.
“How was he allowed to get into the school without any checks?”
The spokesman added: “In the absence of documentary evidence, Home Office staff are only able to treat a claimant as an adult if their physical appearance and demeanour very strongly suggest that they are significantly over 18 years of age – and where two officers have reached this conclusion independently. The threshold is set deliberately high so that only those who are very clearly over 18 are assessed as adults.”
‘I’m ashamed both for the school and the Government. They have both failed to protect our children’