Where diversity doesn’t mean disadvantage

by Marilyn Achiron 
Editor, Directorate for Education and Skills

OECD publications and international media regularly discuss the impact of immigrants on host-country societies. This month’s PISA in Focus looks at the issue from a different perspective: how effectively do the education systems of host countries integrate their immigrant students?

Between 2000 and 2009, across OECD countries the proportion of 15-year-olds with an immigrant background increased from 8% to 10%. In Ireland, Liechtenstein, New Zealand, the Russian Federation, Spain and the United States, the proportion of immigrant students increased by five percentage points or more during that time, and these students now represent from 8% to 30% of these countries’ student population. Education systems play a critical role in the process of integration: they give immigrants and their children opportunities to acquire the skills needed for them to join the labour market.

Results from PISA 2009 show that immigrant students of similar socio-economic status who come from the same country perform very differently, depending on their destination country. For example, immigrant students from the Russian Federation living in Finland, Germany and Israel perform around the OECD average in reading while those in the Czech Republic score about 30 points below the OECD average – the equivalent of a full year of school. Similarly, immigrant students from the Former Yugoslavia living in Denmark score about 40 points below the OECD average while those in Luxembourg score more than 80 points below average. 

The same pattern is observed among students from OECD countries who have immigrated to other countries. For example, on average, German students in Austria and Luxembourg perform at least 10 score points below the OECD average in reading, while those in the Netherlands and Switzerland score more than 30 points above average. On average, French students going to school in Belgium, Israel and Luxembourg perform around the OECD average, while those in Switzerland score 35 points above average.

While immigration policies, similarities between the immigrants’ and the host cultures, and other social policies also explain some of these differences in performance, some education systems appear to be able to facilitate the integration of immigrant students better than others. Immigrant students tend to perform better in school systems that have relatively large populations of immigrant students and where immigrant students are as diverse in their socio-economic status as other students. For example, between one in four and one in five students in Australia, Canada, Israel and the United States have an immigrant background. In these four countries, all students with similar socio-economic status perform equally well, regardless of whether or not they are immigrants. By contrast, in countries where immigrant students represent only a small proportion of the overall student population, and this group is more socio-economically diverse than the overall student population, performance differences between immigrant and non-immigrant students are relatively large, even after taking socio-economic status into account.

PISA results show that immigrant students tend to do better in countries and economies that rise to the challenge of diversity and whose school system is flexible enough to adapt to students with different strengths and needs. Countries that are just beginning to receive increasing numbers of immigrant students from diverse backgrounds can learn from the experience of those systems that have been confronted with this challenge for longer and have succeeded in integrating these students into their school systems.

Links:
For more information on PISA: www.oecd.org/pisa/
PISA in Focus No.33: What do immigrant students tell us about the quality of education systems?
Related PISA in Focus issues:
How are school systems adapting to increasing numbers of immigrants students?
How do immigrant students fare in disadvantaged schools?
Do immigrant students' reading skills depend on how long they've been in their new country?
Photo credit: road made with flags from around the world/@ Shutterstock

Urban studies

by Marilyn Achiron
Editor, Directorate for Education

To many people, the phrase “inner-city schools” is synonymous with crumbling buildings, frustrated teachers, disengaged students, truancy and violence. In some urban areas, though, city schools and the students who attend them flourish. In fact, three of the top five performers in reading in the PISA 2009 survey—Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore—are large cities. So are big cities a boon or a bane for education?

The latest edition of PISA in Focus presents new analyses suggesting that, in some countries, students in large cities—defined as those with over one million inhabitants—score on a par with their top-performing peers in PISA. For instance, students in urban areas in countries like Portugal and Israel, countries that tend to perform around the OECD average in PISA, compare favourably with students in Singapore; and the performance of students in Poland’s urban areas compares easily with that of students in Hong Kong.

But in Belgium, the United Kingdom and the United States, the performance of students in large urban areas drags down overall country scores in PISA. This might be because, in these countries, not all students can enjoy the advantages—including a rich cultural environment, more school choice and good job prospects after leaving school—that large urban centres offer. Some of these students may come from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds, speak a different language at home than the one spoken at school, or have only one parent to turn to for support and assistance.

However, these new analyses of PISA data also show that an urban environment’s impact on learning is not just related to socio-economic advantage or disadvantage. Even when comparing students of similar backgrounds in OECD countries, those attending schools in urban areas in Chile, the Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Mexico and Turkey scored more than 45 points higher—the equivalent of more than one year of formal schooling—than their peers in rural schools. In Hungary, the performance gap between the two groups of students was more than 70 score points wide.

What these analyses tell us is that in order to join the ranks of PISA best-performers, countries may have to provide targeted support to isolated rural communities to ensure that students attending schools in these areas reach their full potential, while those countries whose city-based students underperform will have to figure out how to both embrace a heterogeneous student population and enable these students to tap into the cultural and social advantages that large urban areas offer.

Links:
For more information:
on PISA: www.pisa.oecd.org
PISA in Focus: Are large cities educational assets or liabilities?
Photo credit: City student / Shutterstock

Let’s learn a new language

by Lynda Hawe
Communications Officer, Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI), Directorate for Education 

How many of you have experienced while travelling, in a country which hosts a foreign language and a different culture, the desperate need to wholeheartedly express yourself?  As frantically you watch your intrigued interlocutor return your inadequate efforts with blank looks of total incomprehension! Then, with the support of some friendly smiles, warm gestures and some very theatrical hand waving motions, suddenly the situation eases and you feel a connection, even if you’re still not completely understood!

The language assets of a country, as well as the language components of human capital of individuals, can provide to be of a comparative advantage in our globalising world. Visibly, globalisation transcends time and geographical barriers as well as political and social ideals. It also enhances the blending of cultural elements, such as music, languages and cuisine.

Currently, the use of more than one language is no longer exceptional - over six billion people in the world speak an estimated six thousand languages.  Moreover, as UNESCO explains, there are many endangered languages with the risk that the disappearance of these unwritten and undocumented languages, humanity would lose not only a cultural wealth but also important ancestral knowledge.

Amazingly, for early infants simple gaze following is a crucial developmental component because it enables language learning and their acquisition of new skills via imitation and instruction, as explained by Dr. Meltzoff of the LIFE Center at a recent CERI and New Science Foundation (NSF) conference during his presentation on Social Cognition and the Early Years.  But it’s never too late to learn a new language; a current project on brain function investigates how mastering of multiple languages can have profound effects on our cognitive abilities, extending beyond social and communicative benefits. Bilinguals outperform monolinguals in a variety of tasks that are cognitively demanding, such as those drawing on executive processes such as inhibitory control and working memory.

Consequently, nothing is more fundamentally connected to education than language. And isn’t it just amazing how languages issues manage to arouse such strong emotional reactions? Positions in the various debates on languages in education can also have strong political consequences. Even in the scientific community research findings and scholarly arguments are transformed easily into causes that appear to need to be vigorously endorsed. The strong emotional and political loading of language issues in education can be explained by the rapidly changing social context in which old concepts seem to clash with the exigencies of newer ones.   For example, in the United States at the Abraham Lincoln Elementary School, located in Indianapolis, Indiana there are 59 languages spoken among the student body.  Here they have found that many children from other countries are quick to learn English, but communicating with their families is often a much bigger challenge.

The Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI)'s upcoming book “Languages in a Global World: Learning for Better Cultural Understanding” demonstrates how issues concerning languages in education are undergoing profound transitions as a consequence of globalisation, migration and changes in modern societies.  This book will look at the big questions of language diversity around the world and its relation to education learning.  Since learning a new language is not only a means to improving communication, but more importantly a way to promote global understanding.

Given that culture and language are inextricably intertwined, learning a language necessitates familiarising oneself with a new culture. This gives us the unique opportunity to step outside our familiar scope of existence. It allows us to view culture's customs, traditions and norms as well as our own value systems through the eyes of others.  Does this understanding promote appreciation of cultural differences, which in turn creates more tolerance and thus a better appreciation of others? People often express a perceived positive and productive change in their identities as a result of experiences with other languages and cultures.

Learn more:
• OECD work on Globalisation and Linguistic Competencies
• OECD work on the brain and learning
• Activities in the Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI) 

Related blog posts and articles:

• Internet and Language Change, Macmillan Dictionary Blog 
• China's drive to teach English stalls in the west, The Guardian
• My Family’s Experiment in Extreme Schooling, The New York Times
• Variety of languages challenges, enriches schools Indystar 
• How Language Affects Thought, Education Matters blogspot
• UNESCO International Mother Language day is on 21st of February 

Photo Credit © dihrespati