Dispelling Education Myths Through Data: The Case of Immigrant Students

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Lara Gruben

Myth 1: A large proportion of immigrant students affects student performance

Data from the 2012 PISA study show that in the majority of cases a larger proportion of immigrant students is not related to lower student performance. The average increase in foreign-born students is much lower than popular debate suggests. According to PISA evidence, the share of 15-year-old students who are first-generation immigrants only grew by 0.4 percentage points on average across the OECD countries between 2003 and 2012.

Socio-economic background has a stronger influence on school performance than immigration. However, this is often overlooked, because if socio-economic background is not controlled for, PISA data show that 15-year-olds, who attend schools where the concentration of immigrants is high, tend to do worse in school than students who attend schools without immigrant students. What might lead to believe that the share of immigrant students has an effect on school outcomes is that immigrant students are often located in the same neighbourhoods. In some countries, migrants may be grouped together for residential or other reasons. . In the US for example, where 21% of all students have an immigrant background, disadvantaged schools tend to have a higher concentration of immigrants (40%).











































































The  change over time in performance of immigrant students varies across countries. A comparison of PISA data from 2003 and 2012 shows that in countries like Canada, France and Sweden it was both the performance of immigrants and non-immigrants that decreased in this period and the performance gap between students with and without immigrant background widened. In other countries, however, such as Belgium, Germany and Switzerland, the performance disadvantage among immigrant students shrank in the same period.

 There are a number of policies that can help schools to improve immigrant student performance. One approach is to provide information for parents on how to overcome financial or logistical barriers to school access. Additionally, the extent to which schools can select students according to their socio-economic background can be limited. At the same time incentives can be created for advantaged students to go to schools in disadvantaged areas by making the curriculum more appealing or creating special concentration classes in art/sciences/sports, as the OECD report “Helping Immigrant students to succeed at school” suggests. 

Myth 2: Students from certain countries integrate better than others

No general trend shows that students with certain cultural backgrounds integrate better than others when comparing across countries. According to PISA data, immigrant students from the same country of origin and similar socio-economic background often perform differently in different school systems. This is also reflected in the extent to which immigrant students feel integrated in the destination country. According to PISA results, students from Iraq, for example feel an almost twice as strong sense of belonging in Finland as they do in Denmark. Students from Russia equally feel a strong sense of belonging in Finland. This suggests that there are systemic elements schools can improve to improve the integration of immigrant students.

Education systems have an important role in integrating immigrant students. With programmes that address language, cognitive and psychological needs, gaps in knowledge and difficulties in communication can be prevented.

Sources: http://www.oecd.org/education/Helping-immigrant-students-to-succeed-at-school-and-beyond.pdf, http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/docserver/download/5jrqj7vk0jhk-en.pdf?expires=1489656012&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=33026347BA855FC747C691AE12B923E5

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