Going Beyond the “Immigration-Ruins-Our-Education-System” Myth

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Jingjie “Alva” Dai



In bad times, people blame immigrants: in this case, it is over the declining education outcomes in Sweden. While the accusation does not stand, migrant children do face certain difficulties in most OECD countries. So how should governments and schools tackle this issue?

A multi-cultural classroom in USA

 “The large influx of immigrants to Swedish schools has been cited as a significant part of the reason why Sweden has dropped more than any other European country in the international PISA rankings.” goes the English Wikipedia page of Education in Sweden with four references from online media sources. In fact, you can find a number of similar articles on the Internet that claim a major correlation - even causality - between the increase in immigrant population and the rapid fall of Sweden’s education performance. Such a myth not only impedes Sweden from identifying the real problems in its school system, but also adds fuel to already rising anti-immigrant sentiments.

After years of declining performances in the PISA test, Sweden’s well-below average results in 2012 finally alerted the government and society to the problem. The country’s grades in all three subjects did bounce up to around the average level among OECD countries in 2015 but people continue to scapegoat immigrants for Sweden’s unimpressive grades. However, the OECD report to the Swedish government in 2015, Improving Schools in Sweden: An OECD Perspective, stresses that the country’s declining academic outcomes are consistent “among all groups of students, regardless of socio-economic status, immigrant background or gender”. 

At the same time, immigrant students do face difficulties and often need additional help at school. There is a significant difference in learning outcomes between immigrant and non-immigrant students in Sweden, and the gap has been widening. This is actually a common problem for most OECD countries.
Sweden, third from left, shows a significant difference between immigrant and non-immigrant students in science performance 
Several factors hinder immigrant students’ progress at school, including language barriers, socio-economic disadvantages and cultural differences. However, the academic performances of immigrant students differ widely across countries; in some cases, immigrant students do as well as, or even better than, their native counterparts. Although the culture and education students’ countries of origin can have a strong influence on their achievements at school, the education systems of receiving countries play a more important role. For example, students from Arab-speaking countries with similar socio-economic backgrounds have much higher grades in Mathematics in the Netherlands than in Qatar.

A student's country of origin can have a significant impact on their educational achievement
In fact, many OECD countries have already realized the importance of better integrating their immigrant populations. To this end, a further OECD report published in 2015, Helping Immigrant Students to Succeed at School – and Beyond, presents a series of measures which have seen generally positive results in diminishing the difference between native and immigrant learners.

The battle is not won and there are different policy actions that can be taken.

Firstly, the concentration of students from disadvantaged socio-economic contexts at school is a major obstacle to student achievement. Although the OECD’s quantitative analysis indicates that a high concentration of immigrant students itself does not affect academic outcomes, many migrant students come from socio-economically underprivileged families and are sometimes forced to move to certain areas because of poverty. Governments can avoid such concentration by giving immigrant parents more information on schooling options and making advantaged schools less selective of students based on socio-economic status.

Secondly, in terms of language barriers, schools should integrate migrant children into mainstream classes from the start of their schooling while offering them extra language training.

The third recommendation is for governments to expand access to pre-primary education program, reach out to migrant parents and tailor programs to better accommodate their needs.

Fourthly, education systems should avoid grade repetition and early tracking because these two measures do not favor but rather harm students’ progress in general while further disadvantaging migrant children.

The last recommendation is to incorporate diversity, intercultural pedagogy and language development in teachers’ training in order to both satisfy the individual needs of their students and fully take advantage of the linguistic and cultural diversity enriched by immigration.

The OECD closes its report with a hopeful tone. Immigrant students demonstrate both high aspirations for their future careers and willingness to work to achieve them – higher, even, than non-immigrant students in a dozen OECD countries. The PISA results show that many migrant students do succeed academically in spite of the difficulties they encounter. Finally, experiences across countries illustrate the potential of all the states to live up to the ambitions and dreams of their immigrant children.

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