“The first time I came here it was hard”, Yegor says. “When I came to school, I talked to only my Ukrainian friends.” He found that on first impressions, the UK was “very different” from Ukraine: the weather, the buses, the ratio of houses to flats, and even the number of smiles all amalgamated to a culture shock.
But it seems the language barrier was Yegor’s main concern. Once he had time over the summer to develop his English, he was able to make other friends: “People were friendly, everybody wants to talk with me, and nobody says, ‘Go to Ukraine!’” He seems to enjoy school life too, favouring religious education, a subject not taught at his school back home.
However, Yegor’s experience at school may not be all that applicable to the other 20,000 Ukrainian child refugees in the UK he is amongst, or even to many native children in the UK. Yegor attends one of the most exclusive and privileged schools in the country, ranked within the top 30 independent schools in the UK, thanks to financial aid. He receives tuition of the English language with a native Ukrainian teacher, educating him using literature. He is impressed by having three separate lessons for science and three for maths (geometry, algebra, and statistics), unaware that this is not a trait of the UK state school system.
Despite this opportunity, the future remains uncertain for Yegor. His visit to his father in Western Ukraine over Christmas shows that permanent return is not yet possible. “2 hours we had light, 4 hours we didn’t”, Yegor says. “When the lights are off, we don’t have water too.” Yet life in the UK does not promise complete certainty either. His mother, like many other Ukrainian refugees, is unable to find private accommodation and will be unable to rely on the government scheme for much longer.
“People here live better”, Yegor claims, but whether this is a fate that will remain true for him and his family is unclear.
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