Title of Product
PISA - Untapped Skills: Realising the Potential of Immigrant Students
Name of Producer
OECD Publishing
Language of the review
English
Language of the product
English
Type of product
Online Publication
Thematic Area
Integration of immigrants students
Target Group
Headmasters, Teachers, Students, Parents
Description of Contents
A country’s success in integrating immigrants’ children is a key benchmark of the efficacy of social policy in general and education policy in particular. the variance in performance gaps between immigrant and non-immigrant students across countries, even after adjusting for socio-economic background, suggests that policy has an important role to play in eliminating such gaps. Yet education policy alone is unlikely to fully address these challenges.
Untapped Skills: Realising the Potential of Immigrant Students was jointly produced by the countries participating in Pisa, the experts and institutions working within the framework of the Pisa Consortium, the oeCd directorate
for education and the oeCd directorate for employment, labour and social affairs. it offers an in-depth look at the various factors, including language and socio-economic disadvantage, that can impede the full integration of immigrant students into their host societies.
Contents
Chapter 1. overview of immigration Regimes and education systems
Chapter 2. the Performance Profiles of immigrant students
Chapter 3. mastery of the assessment language and Reading outcomes
Chapter 4. immigrant students’ age at arrival and assessment Results
Chapter 5. Parental education, immigrant Concentration and Pisa outcomes
Chapter 6. Post-secondary attendance of immigrants in Switzerland and Canada
Review
Integrating immigrant student populations poses significant challenges to the quality and equity of education systems across OECD
countries. Migration is not a new phenomenon, but ageing populations and the looming threat of labour and skill shortages have
brought the issue to the top of the policy agenda in many countries. A country’s success in integrating immigrants’ children is a key
benchmark of the efficacy of social policy in general and educational policy in particular. Education systems that allow all students
to achieve their potential manage to combine excellence and equity.
Designing education policy to address the needs of immigrants’ children is not easy or cheap. It takes a concerted effort to try to
understand what those needs are and the best ways to address them. Furthermore, what works for non-immigrant students might
not work for children of immigrants. The diversity of immigrant student populations across countries signals the wide variety of
challenges these students face. The variance in performance gaps between immigrant and non-immigrant students across countries,
even after adjusting for socio-economic background, suggests that policy has an important role to play in eliminating such gaps.
Yet education policy alone is unlikely to fully address these challenges. For example, immigrant children’s performance in PISA is
more strongly (and negatively) associated with the concentration of educational disadvantage in schools than with the concentration
of immigrants per se or the concentration of students who speak a different language at home than at school. Reducing the
concentration of educational disadvantage may imply changes in housing policy, to enable a more balanced social mix in schools
at an early age.
This report is the product of a collaborative effort between the countries participating in PISA, the experts and institutions
working within the framework of the PISA Consortium, the OECD Directorate for Education (EDU) and the OECD Directorate
for Employment, Labour and Social Affairs (ELS)
