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Main Content
How to Integrate Immigrant Children into Mainstream Education?
Integrating immigrant children is not an issue confined solely to the realm of education. It is, rather, a microcosm of the wider battle to integrate immigrant families into society .Conor Lenihan, Ireland’s Minister of State for Integration stated on his appointment that “The battle for integration will be won and lost in the schools”.
Most European countries make provisions for a Resource Person in each school to be appointed to assist with the integration and social inclusion of foreign pupils. In Ireland, as well as playing an important role as a link between the school and the immigrant children’s family, this person assists foreign pupils with English language learning. In 2008 in Ireland there were 2,180 teachers whose only responsibility was to teach English to foreign pupils with a non-English mother tongue.
The involvement of parents in their children’s education is widely recognised to be a vital element of integration. For this reason, the issue of language is at the centre of attempts to integrate immigrant children. To promote communication between schools and immigrant families, languages other than those used at school must be used. According to a report issued by the Eurydice network, the most widely-used example of this is the use of interpreters who speak the mother tongue language of the immigrant family. However, only in five EU countries (Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Lithuania and Hungary) is this a legal entitlement of immigrants.
Paradoxically, integration into education is strengthened by affording immigrant children the opportunity to learn, or develop their knowledge of, their language of origin. But how this opportunity is granted is important. The way in which their language is viewed by the host society (and education system) has an impact on the self-esteem of immigrants. And this ties in with a European Parliament report which has found that it is beneficial to integration to incorporate the teaching of the language of origin of immigrants into the traditional school curriculum rather than providing lessons after normal school hours which attach a stigma to the learning of their language and lengthens their school day.
There are two ways of providing this teaching of the language of origin. The first is by deciding that immigrants have the right to study their mother tongue within the national education system of the host country. However, this is dependent on there being adequate resources and manpower in individual schools to meet demand. A more innovative, albeit less widespread, approach is to set up a bilateral agreement concerning this tuition between the host country and the immigrants’ countries of origin. Under this approach, both countries have a say in the decision-making process regarding the teaching of the languages of origin and, generally, the resources are provided by the host country while the country from which the immigrants originate provides the language teachers. Currently, six EU countries have such an arrangement in place with other nations (both EU and non-EU), including Germany, France and Luxembourg, all of which have a historical tradition of receiving immigrant workers. Luxembourg has the highest percentage of pupils with a non-indigenous language as their first language, 23.7%, in Europe.
Language-learning is the crux of the issue of how to integrate immigrant children into mainstream education. Immigrant children should be provided with a Resource Person in their school and an opportunity to study their mother-tongue language within the context of the host school curriculum as this will aid social inclusion and is proven to make it easier for these children to learn the language of the host country. W.B.Yeats said that teaching is “…lighting a fire” and successful integration is the only way to ensure that that fire is not extinguished for immigrant children.