Directly integrated schooling may help refugee children adapt to their new society, but it may come at a cost to educational attainment.
Should newly arrived refugee children join mainstream schools immediately, or first attend separate schools offering specialist support? The choice can shape their opportunities well beyond their first years in a new country. Yet policymakers have limited evidence on which approach works best over time.
Both arrangements have advantages. Separate schools can provide intensive language teaching and instruction tailored to children whose education may have been disrupted. They may also offer a supportive environment after displacement. But limited contact with native-born classmates may slow language acquisition and familiarity with the host society. Mainstream schools provide that contact from the outset, yet following an unfamiliar curriculum in a new language can overwhelm children without sufficient support.
In our recent paper, we examine this choice in the Netherlands, where both arrangements coexist. Municipalities decide whether children arriving at primary-school age enter mainstream schools or initially attend separate schools. Children arriving at secondary-school age, by contrast, initially receive separate schooling everywhere. The comparison concerns the initial reception of newcomers, rather than permanent separation throughout their education.
We use administrative records for refugee children who arrived between 2003 and 2010. Their allocation across municipalities was plausibly random, but municipalities’ schooling policies could reflect other local characteristics. We therefore compare outcomes for children arriving at primary- and secondary-school age across municipalities with different primary-school arrangements. This helps distinguish the effects of schooling from those of the places where children were assigned.
The educational results are striking. Direct integration reduces the probability of obtaining a secondary-school diploma by age 18 by around seven percentage points, a substantial effect compared with an average graduation rate of 36 percent in our sample. The decline is largely explained by a greater likelihood of entering the lowest secondary-school track, which did not award a nationally recognized diploma during the period studied. The adverse effects are concentrated among children whose parents have less education and those from Muslim-majority countries.
The findings on cultural assimilation point in a different direction, although they require more caution. Girls initially placed in integrated schools are more likely to use hormonal contraceptives by age 18. We interpret this as a proxy for one dimension of cultural assimilation, rather than a comprehensive measure of integration or well-being. The pattern is consistent with greater exposure to host-country norms. The positive effect is concentrated among girls from non-Muslim-majority countries.
Why might separate schools produce better educational outcomes? Specialist teaching offers a plausible explanation. Municipalities providing separate primary schooling employ substantially more teachers qualified to teach Dutch as a second language. School inspection records also suggest advantages in tailoring instruction to students’ needs and keeping students focused on learning. These findings support the importance of specialized support, although they do not establish how much of the educational effect it explains.
The policy lesson is therefore more nuanced than a simple choice between integration and separation. Immediate placement alongside native-born students does not automatically give refugee children the support they need to succeed academically. Equally, stronger educational outcomes in separate schools do not resolve concerns about limited contact with the wider society.
For systems that integrate children immediately, specialist language teachers and targeted learning support are promising ways to address the educational disadvantages we identify. For systems that begin with separate schooling, shared extracurricular activities and well-supported transitions into mainstream education may help maintain contact with native-born peers. These are policy options to test, rather than interventions whose effectiveness our study establishes.
Our findings reveal a potential trade-off under the arrangements we study, not an unavoidable conflict between educational success and social integration. The challenge is to give refugee children both the specialized teaching they need and meaningful opportunities to learn alongside their peers.
© Caterina Pavese, Simon ter Meulen, and Ludger Woessmann
Caterina Pavese is Fixed-term Researcher in Tenure Track at University Bologna, Italy
Simon ter Meulen is Assistant Professor (non-tenure track) at ifo Center for the Economics of Education/University of Munich, Germany
Ludger Woessmann is is Director of the ifo Center for the Economics of Education and Professor at University of Munich, Germany, and IZA@LISER Research Fellow
Please note:
We recognize that World of Labour articles may prompt discussion and possibly controversy. Opinion pieces, such as the one above, capture ideas and debates concisely, and anchor them with real-world examples. Opinions stated here do not necessarily reflect those of the LISER.
Related World of Labour content:
https://wol.iza.org/articles/refugee-childrens-earnings-in-adulthood by Yoko Yoshida, Jonathan Amoyaw, and Rachel McLay
https://wol.iza.org/articles/integrating-refugees-into-labor-markets by Pieter Bevelander
https://wol.iza.org/articles/school-tracking-and-intergenerational-social-mobility by Tuomas Pekkarinen
https://wol.iza.org/articles/migrants-and-educational-achievement-gaps by Horst Entorf