Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

IMMIGRANT

Migrants prefer schools with fewer foreigners

Migrants in Germany would rather send their children to schools with fewer other migrants, a study published on Wednesday revealed. Parents fear that attending a school with too many other foreigners could hinder their children’s education.

Published: 4 December 2013 15:08 CET
Migrants prefer schools with fewer foreigners
Photo: Bernd Thissen dpa/lmv

On Wednesday preliminary results were released at a press conference in Berlin from the study entitled “Education, Background, Migration”. The study was conducted by the Heinrich Heine University in Düsseldorf on behalf of the Vodafone and Mercator Institutes.

Professor Heiner-Barz from the university’s department of educational research told The Local: “Many parents would rather send their children to schools with fewer migrants because they think it will harm their children’s educational opportunities.”

“Among other things, they worry that their children’s language skills will not develop properly,” he added.

Barz said the results came as a surprise. “We thought that some parents would express these concerns, but not so many,” he said.

For the study, 120 in-depth interviews were conducted with people from a variety of migrant backgrounds. All of the groups surveyed agreed that being a migrant in Germany limits your educational opportunities.

From the interviews it emerged that most first- and second-generation migrants received little educational support from their parents.

This was due to their parents’ low level of education, a lack of information on the German school system, inadequate language skills or too little money or time to properly help.

“Cultural diversity is naturally a part of life for people with migrant backgrounds and is seen as a positive,” the study’s preliminary report said. “In terms of educational participation in Germany, however – especially in deprived areas – one’s own migrant background and that of one’s children is considered a deficiency and a problem.”

The study’s project leader Meral Cerci told the Welt newspaper that parents want the German school system to be improved in two main ways.

“For one they want to be better informed,” she said. “Many are hardly familiar with the German school system and therefore choose the closest school or one where they know some of the other pupils.”

Parents would also like to see more teaching staff who themselves are from migrant families, the study found.

Full results from the study will be published in December 2014. 

READ MORE: Germans rise up education rankings

NORWAY

Over one in ten children live in low-income households in Norway

The proportion of children who live in low-income households has increased steadily since 2011, rising to just over one-in-ten, according to a report from Statistics Norway.

Published: 29 March 2021 16:10 CEST
Over one in ten children live in low-income households in Norway
Photo: Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The report found that there a total of 115,000 children belong to households in low-income groups. This is around 11 percent of all children in Norway.

“Studies show that people born into low-income families have in increased risk of being left behind in several areas of living, among other things, growing up in low-income shows a connection with negative health outcomes. It has been shown that young people’s mental health is affected by belonging to a low-income family,” the report states.

In its article on the data, Statistics Norway defines “persistent low income” households as having “under 60 percent of [national] median average [income] over three years”.

Children with an immigrant background have accounted for more than half the children from persistent low-income groups since 2013. This is despite only accounting for 18 percent of all children. Nearly 40 percent of children with immigrant backgrounds belong to low-income households, according to the Statistics Norway figures.

“This has a clear connection with the fact that households with a weak connection to the labour market are exposed to low income,” the report said.

Families with a Syrian background had the highest proportion of low-income households with almost nine-out-of-ten children coming from low-income families. Meanwhile, the largest group of children in number are those with a Somali background with over 11,000 of these children living in low-income households. Children with an Eritrean background saw the largest jump.

READ ALSO: Immigrants in Norway more likely to be affected by loneliness 

The report indicated that the reason behind these groups having large numbers of children belonging to low-income households was because the average number of people in the household with an occupation was less than one between 2017 and 2019.

Those with Lithuanian and Polish backgrounds saw decreases of children in low-income households. Children from these countries, as well as Sri Lanka, India and Bosnia-Herzegovina averaged 1.5 people employed in the household in the same period.  

Single parents are much more likely to be found in low-income groups, as are families with three or more children. 

The areas with the largest municipalities were most exposed to low income. Sarpsborg, in southern Norway, overtook Drammen as the municipality with the largest proportion of low-income children with 19.1 percent.

SHOW COMMENTS