Vietnamese children ‘going missing from private schools’

PRIVATE schools are making hundreds of thousands of pounds from Vietnamese children who are entering Britain on student visas then disappearing, it has been revealed.

Children thought to be as young as 15 are being brought over by suspected trafficking gangs through legitimate visas sponsored by private schools without their knowledge, an investigation by The Times found.

Despite the students paying for a term at school, they then often going missing within weeks of starting.

The investigation uncovered at least 21 Vietnamese children who have vanished from boarding schools and private colleges in the past four years.

Police and the Home Office are investigating the disappearances.

Eight Vietnamese children have gone missing from the £25,000-a-year Chelsea Independent College, a west London school owned by Astrum Education. At Abbey College, Malvern, Worcs, a 15-year-old girl from Vietnam who started at the school in September 2017 failed to return after Christmas.

All the schools and colleges identified followed protocol and informed police and the Home Office.

Astrum said that it had been targeted by “organised criminal activity”. It has reviewed safeguarding procedures.

Abbey College, said: “We took this case extremely seriously. No failings by this college were found by any of the authorities who looked into this case.” ♦ Children as young as seven are being taught self-defence classes by a mixed martial arts expert at Copenhagen Primary School in Islington, north London, to prepare them for potential knife attacks, it was disclosed.