This paper examines the primacy of trust in childhood and education in relation to the schooling of children seeking refuge. We open with Løgstrup’s (1997) account of the centrality of trust in human life. We then move on to address Buber’s (2005) insistence that in the absence of trust in education the young are bereft of trust in the world itself and Greene’s (1993) identification of trust at the beginning of all learning. In light of these accounts, we examine the consequences of the betrayal of trust in young lives uprooted from their homelands by forces entirely beyond their control, before examining the question of how trust might be regained by inclusive relations in schooling. We draw on the findings of in-depth and dialogical interviews with teachers and other professionals working with children seeking refuge in four primary schools in the UK. These finding elicit the many ways in which trusting relationships in schools can usher in cultures of inclusion and bring stability, confidence and hope to lives cast adrift. Together, the experiences and insights of these teachers counter deficiency and merely specialist interpretations of the inclusion of children seeking refuge. At the same time, the teacher’s testaments illuminate the differences that ethical work can make in answering the fundamental human need of these children to trust and to be trusted. We conclude by way of exploring how the practice illuminated by these interviews might, in turn, ensure that children seeking refuge are included, both now, in their schools, and in a future world, a world these children might come to change for the better.

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