Integrating Immigrant Children into Schools in Europe

Chapter 4 – Measures for the Integration of Immigrant Children at SchoolThe majority of these measures are devised for children who have recently arrived in the host country.Temporary support measures are mainly intended to overcome initial problems which hinder rapidintegration of these children at school. Even in the separate model involving long-term measures, specialclasses for immigrant children last no longer than two years.School dropout and absenteeism among immigrant pupils are also a serious concern for thoseresponsible for education. Because the family and socio-economic circumstances of immigrant pupilsmay often be somewhat unsettled, they are the focus of special attention as a potentially vulnerablegroup. Accordingly, countries such as Belgium (the French and Flemish Communities), Spain and theNetherlands have introduced programmes designed to prevent and fight school failure among thesechildren.FinancingFinancing of these measures falls largely within the broader framework of procedures for financingeducation as a whole. In general, the central education authorities determine how much additionalfunding will be earmarked for school-based measures to assist immigrant children. Subject to certainconditions, the central authorities may also award block grants for this purpose to regional or localauthorities or schools themselves, whose room for manoeuvre in administering such allocations will varydepending on the extent to which the education system concerned is decentralised. It is not uncommonfor local authorities or even schools to receive financial resources that they are entirely responsible foradministering in this respect.For example, this applies to Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom (England andWales), Iceland and Norway, in which the amounts allocated may be earmarked for different supportmeasures to match requirements. Thus in the United Kingdom (England and Wales), the governmentprovides local education authorities with two funding streams to finance a variety of activities onbehalf of their ethnic minorities and children at risk, including immigrant children. Much of this fundingmust be devolved to schools.Several countries require compliance with strict norms relating to the number of pupils of immigrantorigin or the exact point in time at which they arrived in the host country, if schools are to receiveadditional funding.For example in the Czech Republic, schools enrolling children who are asylum seekers obtain anadditional financial allocation. Since 2003 in Lithuania, the coefficient used to determine the numberof pupils has been increased by 10 % in the case of the children of migrant workers. Finally, in Iceland,at least 12 immigrant pupils have to have arrived in the country within the preceding year.47