How Are School Systems Adapting to Increasing Numbers of Immigrant Students? PISA in Focus. No. 11

Whether in flight from conflict, with the hope of building a better life, or to seize a social or economic opportunity, people have been crossing borders for as long as there have been borders to cross. Modern means of transportation and communication, the globalisation of the labour market, and the ageing of populations in OECD (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) countries will drive migration well into the next decades. The key to maintaining social cohesion during these population movements is to integrate immigrants and their families well into their adopted countries; and education can be a powerful lever to achieve this. Based on information gathered from questionnaires distributed with the PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2009 assessment, the percentage of 15-year-old students with an immigrant background grew by two percentage points, on average, between 2000 and 2009 among OECD countries with comparable data. This paper reports that: (1) On average among OECD countries, the percentage of students with an immigrant background grew by two percentage points between 2000 and 2009; (2) Immigrant students represent more than 5% of the student population in 13 OECD and partner countries and economies that participated in PISA 2009; and (3) In most countries, immigrant students lag behind native students in performance; in many countries, the difference is considerable. However, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland have been able to narrow, and in some cases close, this performance gap.