What can education systems do to support students with immigrant backgrounds?

by Francesca Borgonovi
Senior Analyst

Large-scale migration is starting to radically alter the makeup of today’s classrooms, bringing a new wave of social, cultural and linguistic diversity to schools in destination countries. Results from the latest publication of the Strength through Diversity project, The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background: Factors that Shape Well-Being, reveal that in 2015, almost one in four 15-year-old students in OECD countries reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one foreign-born parent. Indeed, in Luxembourg and Switzerland, more than one out of every two 15-year-old students reported that they were either foreign-born or had at least one parent who was; and between 2003 and 2015, the share of students who had either migrated or had a parent who migrated across international borders grew by an average of six percentage points across OECD countries.

The ability of societies to preserve and promote social cohesion in the presence of large migration flows depends on their capacity to integrate immigrants. While migration flows can create difficulties for host communities, they also represent an opportunity for countries with ageing native-born populations that face labour and skills shortages. Effective education and social policies are essential for successfully integrating migrant children into society and unlocking the potential benefits of migration.

Schools often act as an early point of contact between young immigrants and their host societies, helping to determine their ability to participate in the labour markets of host countries, contribute to welfare arrangements, and feel part of their communities. This new OECD report is the first of its kind because it examines the overall resilience – “resilience” being the ability to thrive academically, socially and emotionally in adverse circumstances – of students with an immigrant background as they integrate into education systems. The report identifies both the risk factors that prevent immigrant students from successfully integrating and the protective factors that enable these students to flourish.

Many students with an immigrant background fail to achieve the academic, social and emotional outcomes that are comparable to those achieved by their native peers.

Despite the adversities they face, many students with an immigrant background actually overcome the various disadvantages that often accompany displacement, and display high levels of academic, social, emotional and motivational resilience. For example, as much as 49% of first-generation and 61% of second-generation immigrant students achieve at least baseline levels of proficiency in the three core PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) subjects of reading, mathematics and science; and as much as 59% of first-generation and 63% of second-generation immigrant students report feeling a strong sense of belonging at school. Crucially, many students with an immigrant background appear to be motivated to make the most of their educational opportunities: 71% of both first- and second-generation immigrant students report high levels of achievement motivation.

But many students with an immigrant background fail to achieve the academic, social and emotional outcomes that are comparable to those achieved by their native peers; they struggle to overcome socio-economic disadvantages, language barriers and the difficulty of forging a new identity.

Education systems play a key role in enabling students with an immigrant background to reach their academic potential, feel part of their communities and be satisfied with their lives. Findings from this new report suggest that when education systems adequately support students with an immigrant background, other students can benefit too. The growing diversity that arises from international migration can be a great opportunity for education systems, forcing teachers to rethink their pedagogical approaches and teaching styles. Doing so will better equip them to cater to the needs of each student, whether the student has an immigrant background or not. At the same time, if teachers and educators do not have the right support, they may not be able to adapt to these changes, and all students may suffer as a result.

Schools in many communities are already working to promote the resilience of students with an immigrant background, often jointly with other social service providers and civil society, and with direct financial and logistical support from national, regional or local governments. The Strength through Diversity project has been facilitating dialogue among countries through its dedicated Policy Forum series, but more can be done. This new OECD report can help educators build the resilience, and ease the integration, of all students with an immigrant background.

Read more

Strength through Diversity: The Integration of Immigrants and Refugees in School and Training Systems
The Resilience of Students with an Immigrant Background. Factors that Shape Well-being

Photo credit: @Shutterstock

Succeeding with resilience – Lessons for schools

by Johanna Boersch-Supan
Director, Vodafone Germany Foundation – think tank 

Digitisation is expected to profoundly change the way we learn and work – at a faster pace than previous major drivers of transformation. Many children entering school today are likely to end up working in jobs that do not yet exist. Preparing students for these unchartered territories means that we not only have to make sure that they have the right technical capabilities but that we have to strengthen their emotional and social skills. Resilience, the individual capacity to overcome adverse circumstances and use them as sources for personal development, lies at the core of being able to successfully adapt to change and thus actively engage with our digital world.

A special PISA analysis conducted by the OECD in collaboration with the Vodafone Germany Foundation shows that several countries were able to increase the share of academically resilient students with disadvantaged backgrounds over the last decade.* The increase was particularly pronounced –among other countries and economies– in Germany: while in 2006 only a quarter of disadvantaged students performed well in all three academic subjects tested in PISA, by 2015 a third did.

While resilience is foremost an individual characteristic, the in-depth analysis of PISA data from 2012 and 2015 suggests that the school environment can play a key role in mitigating the risk of low achievement among disadvantaged students. To this end, the study was able to identify attributes common to schools in which disadvantaged students succeed. Across the vast majority of education systems examined, the likelihood that disadvantaged students are resilient is higher in schools where students reported a good disciplinary climate, compared to schools with more disruptive environments. This holds even after accounting for differences in students’ and schools’ socio-economic profiles and individual characteristics associated with resilience. Attending orderly classes, in which students can focus and teachers provide well-paced instruction, is beneficial for all students, but in particular for the most vulnerable. 

By contrast, the likelihood of resilience among disadvantaged students is only weakly related to the amount of human and material resources available in their schools, measured through indicators of class size and student-computer ratios. Especially in Germany, however, disadvantaged students are more likely to be resilient in schools that offer a high number of extracurricular activities. The fact that no correlation exists between most resource indicators and the share of resilient students among socio-economically disadvantaged students does not mean that investments in education do not matter. Rather it suggests that resources help disadvantaged students to succeed only if they effectively improve aspects of their learning environment that are more directly linked to their opportunities to learn. Thus, the fact that extracurricular activities are associated with a greater likelihood of resilience may reflect the way in which these investments promote engagement among teachers, students and the students’ families, and can help develop a sense of belonging at school.

The PISA data also offer insight into some specific school policies and managerial practices which can help improve the disciplinary climate at the school level. First, students tend to report a better disciplinary climate in schools with a lower turnover among teachers. Unstable teaching teams may lack cohesion and limit the accumulation of experience that is necessary to establish an environment conducive to learning even in difficult conditions. Teacher turnover can be reduced by rewarding collaboration between teachers and by developing mentorship programmes to ensure that more experienced teachers can support new ones and help them quickly establish strong bonds with the school. A transformational leadership style adopted by principals is a second factor associated with a positive disciplinary climate experienced by students. Transformational leaders foster capacity development and work to promote a high level of commitment among teachers towards a common mission, strategic goals and high academic standards.

The 2017 edition of the OECD Employment Outlook shows rising levels of socio-economic inequality driven, among other factors, by automation in the labour market. Understanding how to support resilience in students is essential not only for equipping them to thrive in a digital future but also for creating more equal opportunities in education and thereby strengthening social cohesion.

*A German version of the study focusing on data from Germany can be found at: resilienz.vodafone-stiftung.de

Links

Vodafone Germany Foundation, Coding & Character – a representative study on skills for the digital future

OECD Education Working Paper No. 167 – Academic resilience: What schools and countries do to help disadvantaged students succeed in PISA

OECD Employment Outlook 2017 (also available in German)

PISA in Focus No. 80 – In which countries and schools do disadvantaged students succeed?

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