Children of immigrants are being blamed for the decline in the quality of Danish schools following shocking PISA results, prompting calls for more resources.
According to DR, all Danish municipalities have called an urgent meeting today, following last week's historically poor PISA test results. Several municipalities and school principals are demanding that the meeting focus particularly on students of immigrant origin, after the test results showed that this group performed significantly below students without immigrant backgrounds.
Local officials believe that municipalities with high proportions of children of immigrant origin face a greater challenge, and therefore should receive additional resources to help them raise educational standards.
Local official: Municipalities with high rates need more support
Kurt Scheelsbeck, chairman of the institutions and schools committee in Høje-Taastrup municipality and a Conservative Party member, puts this issue at the top of the meeting's priorities, arguing that municipalities with large numbers of children of immigrant origin should be among the first to benefit when additional resources are distributed.
The figures in Article DR indicate that approximately 37% of children and young people aged between 0 and 17 in the municipality are immigrants and their children.
Schilsbeck said the municipality "bears its share of the burden" because of the relatively high number of children from other ethnic backgrounds, adding that it makes sense to support it so that it can successfully deal with the challenge, because the success of these efforts is, in his opinion, in the interest of all of Denmark.
Approximately half of students from immigrant backgrounds are classified as low-achieving.
New PISA test results show that Danish students, whether of immigrant origin or not, have declined in mathematics, reading and science.
But Louise Beuchert, the lead researcher at the VIVE research center behind the Danish part of the PISA test, points to an important difference between the two groups: students of immigrant origin were already scoring low on the test, and about half of all students of immigrant origin are classified as low performers.
Beuchert believes that a high number of low-performing students means that schools and classrooms may have large numbers of students with poor academic performance, which can make the teaching process more difficult and may also increase the difficulties faced by the students themselves.
Math difficulties manifest even in everyday life.
Beaucher explains that classifying a student as a low performer means, among other things, that he may have difficulty using the mathematical knowledge he learns in everyday life situations.
She gives as an example the difficulty of understanding how to calculate 20% from a number that a student sees in a store or supermarket, considering that this type of skill represents a part of the everyday mathematics that the student needs outside of school.
Social background explains part of the difference.
VIVE does not directly link the educational gap to immigrant background alone, as it indicates that about 40% of the difference between students of immigrant origin and others is due to the fact that students of immigrant origin usually come from families where the parents have a lower level of education and income.
Thus, the test results open up the discussion to a range of factors, including the family’s socioeconomic circumstances, as well as the language and conditions that children face inside and outside of school.
Approximately one in eight students are of immigrant origin.
The figures in the DR article indicate that 12.3% of school students in Denmark have an immigrant background.
The percentage of those belonging to the second generation of immigrants is 7.3%, while the percentage of immigrants from the first generation is 4.9%.
The students included in this category come from various countries, including Syria, Turkey, Iraq and Somalia, while there are also numbers of students who come from Ukraine and other European countries.
School principals are calling for resources to be directed to areas of greatest difficulty.
Kristian Dissing Olesen, vice president of the Skolelederforeningen (school principals' association), believes that schools with large numbers of bilingual students also face additional challenges in the teaching process.
He says this issue should be included in the discussion about increasing resources allocated to public schools, so that these resources reach the places that face the greatest challenges.
He points out that children who speak with their families in a language other than Danish primarily need additional resources from teachers and educators to help them develop their skills, including reading and writing in Danish.
Involving parents can make all the difference
Desing-Olsen points out that some of the schools that are successful in dealing with this problem are those that are able to involve all parents in school work.
But he explains that in some cases this may require special effort when it comes to children of immigrant origin.
He also believes that schools should be clearer about what they expect from the parents of children of immigrant origin, stressing the need to clarify that school is not just a place for education, but a community that everyone participates in building.
Brondby faces a high proportion of children of immigrant origin.
In the municipality of Brøndby, the proportion of immigrants and their children among the population aged between 0 and 17 years is 36%, according to figures reported by the DR article.
Mayor Maja Højgaard, of the Social Democratic Party, says she is particularly aware of the difficulties children of immigrant origin face with the Danish language when they start school, and notes that parents do not always provide the necessary support to the school.
Hoegard believes that parents are a crucial factor in the municipality's ability to help children and improve their educational opportunities.
The mayor of Brøndby criticizes the focus on what happens outside of school.
Hoygaard calls for a greater focus on what happens within the school itself, rather than on what happened in children's homes or in the Middle East, in the context of discussing the school's ability to break the transmission of social conditions from one generation to the next and give children better opportunities.
She believes that providing a good public school capable of improving children's opportunities requires discussing the conditions that students face within the Danish education system today.
The proposed solution is costly but, according to the municipality, necessary.
Hoygaard asserts that helping municipalities break the transmission of social conditions requires providing good conditions for schools, but at the same time she points to the high cost of doing so.
She believes that creating a flexible school that includes different disciplines and can provide multiple interventions according to the needs of students will be very costly, but she considers it the only solution to achieve a cohesive society.
This comes as all Danish municipalities prepare for the emergency meeting called for after students' poor performance in the PISA test, amid calls to discuss how to distribute resources more effectively to schools and areas facing the toughest educational challenges.
