Obstacles and Opportunities in the Integration of Migrant-Background Children in Schools – CHILD UP Practice Analysis

This is the final background report for the H2020 project, Children Hybrid Integration: Learning Dialogue as a way of Upgrading Policies of Participation – CHILD-UP. CHILD-UP researches the social conditions of migrant children’s integration through social participation, with the final aim of proposing innovative approaches to understanding and transforming their social conditions. The first objective, which was achieved with the context analysis, was to provide a European overview of the situation of migrant children, and also to focus specifically on the policies and practices of integration in schools, reception centres, social services and communities in the seven partner countries: Belgium, Finland, Germany, Italy, Poland, Sweden and the United Kingdom. This report offers a better understanding of the school systems, obstacles, and opportunities that migrant children and their families encounter in the countries involved in CHILD UP. It provides the background against which the qualitative research is being conducted and offers context to those findings by: • Outlining where responsibility for education lies in each country • Explaining how migrant children are incorporated into the school system • Investigating the achievement gap that exists between migrant and non-migrant pupils • Detailing best practices and weaknesses in terms of integrating migrant children into schools in the local context in each country • Presenting how different educational systems approach second language learning and host-country language support