Immigrant children 'feel more at home at school in UK than other students'

OECD report shows 82% of immigrant children feel sense of belonging at school compared with 80% born in UK

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Children of immigrants feel a greater sense of belonging at school in the UK than those born in the country, according to new research.

The report, from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, showed around 82 per cent of immigrant children felt a home at school compared with 80 per cent of those born in the UK. France had the lowest percentage of immigrant children feeling at home in school with 42 per cent.

The report said that in countries like the US and UK “first-generation immigrant students expressed a stronger sense of belonging at school than other students”.

The UK was one of only six countries in the survey out of 41 where this was the case. The others were the United States, Canada, Qatar, New Zealand and Australia.

The study also showed that immigrant children had higher aspirations than indigenous young people with just over 50 per cent saying they liked to solve complex problems compared with just under 40 per cent of non-immigrant children.

The two factors, though, did not mean they did any better in international tests for 15-year-old taken as part of the PISA study. In all three categories, problem solving maths and reading, they lagged behind non-immigrants. In problem solving non-immigrants scored around 530 compared with just over 500 for immigrant children. The respective figures for maths were 500 and around 490 and, for reading,500 and 495.

The research also showed that immigrants in the UK were more likely to be in schools with a high immigrant intake than other countries in the survey. Just under 70 per cent of immigrant children were in schools where the percentage of immigrant pupils was at least half of the school population - compared with an average for OECD countries of around two-thirds.

However, the report adds: “The concentration of immigrant students in schools does not, in itself, have to have adverse effects on student performance or on integration efforts ...

”It is not the concentration of immigrants in a school but, rather, the concentration of socio-economic disadvantage in a school that hinders student achievement.”