How to improve migrants' inclusion in Sweden's schools?
Sweden education system has served to the rest of Europe as a model of integration of migrants. Nevertheless, the recent PISA survey found out difficulties that migrant students face, in contrast with their native-born classmates. As the report says: " In the 2018/19 school year, Sweden’s compulsory education (grundskola) system is expected to accommodate over 1 million students, up from 886 000 students in the 2010/11 school year. According to projections by Statistic Sweden, the number of students is expected to rise until at least 2030".
The OECD published recently a Spotlight Report named ‘Strength through Diversity’ which contains policies that can be helpful also to other European countries; this report focuses on four areas: school choice, teaching capacity, language training and management of diversity.
The report addresses a problem related to some of the negative effects that the parents' freedom of choice can cause. Some of the advice given to Sweden to counteract these difficulties is to implement specific quotas for pupils who are socially or economically disadvantaged. These policies try to balance the freedom of choice of families with equal access to education for all students. Moreover, the Sweden municipality schools might be less affected by these kinds of problems as they actually mainly recruit their pupils from the local geographical area.
The report proposes as well to revise the procedures to recruit teachers from a migrant background, offering them financial support during the necessary preparation to become a teacher in Sweden. By recruiting teachers from diverse backgrounds these policies will make the Swedish system more able to integrate migrant students, offering them a student-teacher relationship more adapted to their needs.
Moreover, the report deals with the theme of the teaching language to be used with migrant and refugee students. It highlights the importance of promoting individualised learning plans in the early stages of the integration process, with a continued support through the process, including students' families as part of the language learning process and, at the same time, it promotes plurilingualism in schools, enhancing their language diversity, ensuring that the migrant students do not lose contact with their mother tongues.
On this specific matter, the recent Eurydice's publication Integrating Students from Migrant Backgrounds into Schools in Europe reports"developing language awareness when studying language and non-language subjects is beneficial to all learners, and especially to bilingual and plurilingual students, including migrant students. It contributes to a deeper insight into linguistic matters, which facilitates language learning and helps them achieve a high level of proficiency in all the languages they know".
Finally, the OECD's report insists on the necessity of "managing diversity across educational communities in times of more diverse immigrant flows", doing the necessary changes in the curriculum and providing training in diversity management. This measure could allow school leaders and teachers to handle increasingly diverse schools, allowing them to provide to students, families, and teachers the support they need.