Sanctuary Scholarship

You must:

• Be a forced migrant to the United Kingdom. This means you are a person displaced from your homeland or place of residence for political, economic, ethnic, environmental, or human rights pressures. You must have one of the residency statuses listed in ‘Eligible residency statuses’ on this page.
• Be unable to access mainstream funding, for example from Student Finance England or a local authority grant. 
• Have already applied to study at the University. You do not need to have an offer of a place yet.
• Not have a degree from a UK university of the same level or higher than the course you want to study at Leeds.
• Be eligible to pay tuition fees at the UK rate. If you receive an offer to study that states you must pay tuition fees at the international rate, make sure you use the fee assessment process to confirm that this is correct.

Your residency status must be either:

• Asylum seeker – currently seeking asylum within the UK, or refused asylum seeker where your application for refugee status has been denied and a fresh claim has already been submitted.
• Limited or discretionary leave to remain.
• Indefinite leave to remain if you have previously held one of the other statuses on this page since arriving in the UK.

Your status may also be one of the following, which are only eligible if you already have a degree of the same level you wish to study at Leeds gained from a University outside of the UK, therefore making you ineligible for mainstream student funding:

• Refugee status or the spouse or child of someone with refugee status.
• Humanitarian Protection status or the spouse or child of someone with Humanitarian Protection status.
• Section 67 Leave or the dependent child of someone with Section 67 Leave.
• Calais Leave.
• Stateless Person Leave or the spouse or child of someone with Stateless Person Leave.
• Granted leave in the UK under the Afghan Relocations and Assistance Policy (ARAP) or the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS).
• Granted leave in the UK under the Ukraine Family Scheme, the Homes for Ukraine Sponsorship Scheme or the Ukraine Extension Scheme.

We can only award the scholarship if your immigration status allows you to study for the duration of your course. If your immigration permission changes so that you are not allowed to study, we may have to cancel the scholarship.

If you have decided not to receive student finance for faith reasons, this does not make you eligible for the Sanctuary Scholarship. For Sharia-compliant funding opportunities, visit our page on financial support for Muslim students.

No specific language requirements are needed for the Sanctuary Scholarship. However, to obtain an offer to study on your programme, there will be English language requirements.

To find out the English language requirements for your course, please contact your course’s admissions team, which can be found on the Course Search page.

If you are successful in obtaining a Sanctuary Scholarship, you will be assessed for suitability for a fully-funded place on a summer pre-sessional language course which can help you meet the language requirements for your course.