Abstract
Immigrant students` school success will benefit the countries they reside in because these children will add to the number of educated numbers in the society which is important for the further development of a country and it will obviously be for the benefit of the immigrant students themselves. For this it is important that the receiving countries have policies which can support the school success of immigrant students. This study investigates the educational policies in three Nordic countries; Denmark, Finland and Norway. The educational acts in the countries are investigated to look at policies which may affect the school success of immigrant students in light of research literature in the field.
First of all there is important to adjust the education to children in order to make the education accessible for them. For most of immigrant students the instruction language in school is not their mother tongue. It is essential to have proficiency in the language of instruction in order to understand and learn the content in school. It is obviously a challenge when immigrant students do not have enough proficiency in the instruction language. The first step to adjust the education for these students would be to make the content of school accessible and have policies which can support development of proficiency in the instruction language.
Parents play an essential role in the education of their children. There are discussions in the research field on how the home background and parents affect the school success of children. Parenting style, parents` educational background, their economic situation and their expectations to their children are some of the factors which play important roles. It is therefore important that schools collaborate with the parents. This study investigates what policies the three Nordic countries have on the issues of adjustment of education, language and parent- school collaboration. Pisa results of immigrant students from Pisa 2006 for these countries are also presented and discussed in relation to the policies in the countries.
All the three Nordic countries convey in their educational acts that adjustment of education is essential in education. However neither of the countries follows it up with regulations which would ensure that the immigrant pupils will get adjustment. All the countries convey the importance of bilingualism and parent-school collaboration, but this is also not followed up.
Pisa results from Pisa 2006 shows that immigrant students had lower mean scores than their majority peers in all the three countries. There are however differences in the gaps of mean scores between immigrant students and majority students in the three countries.