Education institutions and school outcomes of immigrants: a cross-country analysis

Official URL: http://192.168.1.20/record=b1558764 (Table of Contents)

This paper is an attempt to analyze the effects of education institutions on the achievement of immigrant students in 31 high immigration countries. The role of education institutions on immigrant population has not been examined systematically in the literature. This paper aims at filling out this gap by assessing the effect of institutional arrangements in the educational system of host countries. Using OLS procedures with the 2003, 2006 and 2009 PISA datasets, we show that achievement gaps are wider for the immigrant students in the host countries where the school starting age is late. Likewise, the expected duration of preprimary education is a key determinant on the scores of the immigrant students since it can increase the gap between the natives and immigrants if the immigrants are deprived of attending to preprimary education. The tracking system definitely results in the increase of inequality between immigrant and native students. We also figure out that the time spent in the educational system of a host country is a crucial determinant on the achievement of immigrant students and it affects their performance positively. Moreover, the language spoken at home and the age of arrival to a host country have also notable effect on the immigrant performance. In addition, country specific effects such as HDI, income inequality, education spending, pupil-teacher ratio and teacher salary rates are also important factors for immigrant educational outcomes. The inequality between the immigrant and native students is reproduced through the institutional arrangements that are designed without sufficient consideration.