Notwithstanding the efforts made by EU Member States in recent years, third-country nationals continue to be placed at a disadvantage regarding employment, education and social inclusion compared to EU citizens (OECD/European Union, 2015). For refugees, and people with a migration background at large, education is key for socio-economic success and for overcoming disadvantages in European societies. Education fosters social inclusion, economic growth and innovation. While the education of migrants may have higher costs than for non-migrants in a short-term perspective, it is a social investment in the long term (Bonin, 2017). This is true from the perspective of receiving societies of the EU but also from the perspective of building peace and stability in the countries of origin of refugees. Considering that some refugees will eventually return to their countries of origin, the education and skills they acquire in EU countries are tools they can apply for transformation processes in the concerned countries. 
Enhancing education for migrants requires coordination of different policy areas and multi-stakeholder involvement (Bonin, 2017). EU Member States have been facing challenges in providing decent opportunities in education for newly arriving refugees and integrating them into mainstream education. These challenges have intensified since 2015 with the arrival of larger numbers of refugees and asylum seekers.
This paper aims to provide an overview of the existing approaches of policies and initiatives for ensuring continuity of learning for refugees and asylum seekers, especially in Belgium (Flanders), Finland, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, the United Kingdom (UK), and Italy.

Responding to the needs of newcomer refugee youth

The high number of recently arrived refugees in minor age places their integration high on the agenda of education systems. Refugee children and youth have specific needs that set them apart from other migrant pupils, and schools and teachers need to respond in a timely and adequate way. Drawing on Eurostat data, this MPG paper first provides a detailed insight into the size, distribution and age structure of minors who recently applied for, or received, international protection in Europe, thus showing how far-reaching the tasks are in the years ahead. It continues with an overview of eight particular challenges for successfully integrating refugee children and youth in schools, which often correspond to unmet needs and education policy gaps in European countries. These challenges include e.g. prolonged insecurity due to long asylum procedures, problems with assessing previous attainments, need for catch-up education to make good time spent outside school, traumatization or a high share of unaccompanied minors above compulsory school age. Referring to MIPEX results, stakeholder interviews in seven countries and key results of previous research, the paper then sketches out the strengths and weaknesses of migrant education policies across European countries and identifies success factors in national policies for newcomer pupils. The annex includes an analysis of EU-level stakeholder organisations active in the migrant education field.

The ‘Multi‐country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum‐seeking Youth in Europe  ‐ PERAE’ was initiated by the SIRIUS Network – Policy Network on Migrant Education in 2016 with the support of the Mercator Foundation. The initiative builds up on the SIRIUS ‘Agenda on Migrant Education’ (SIRIUS, 2014) and the Statement on Urgent Response for the Education of Refugees (SIRIUS, 2015) that “calls on the EU and its Member States to respond to the specific education needs of refugee children and students in the EU and abroad”. The partnership between seven countries (Belgium (Flanders), Bulgaria, Germany (Bavaria, Hamburg), Greece, the Nether‐ lands, Sweden, United Kingdom (England) addresses inadequate access to quality education for asylum‐seeking and refugee youth1 throughout the European Union (EU) with a focus on secondary education.

The ‘Multi‐country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum‐seeking Youth in Europe’ aimed to contribute to the improvement of the access to quality education for refugee children and youth through the adaptation of policies in the European countries to their needs. Through an interactive process with stakeholders and policy makers, the initiative ensured that the developed recommendations were owned and implemented by them. It is expected that this will contribute to better educational opportunities for refugee children and youth in a long term perspective.

We are sharing here the report that constitutes a comparative analysis of the national reports compiled in stage one of the ‘Multi‐country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum‐seeking Youth in Europe’. Hence, a particular focus is placed on approaches of policies and initiatives for ensuring access to education and opportunities to succeed in education for refugees and asylum seekers in school age (with a focus on secondary education) in Belgium (Flanders), Germany (Bavaria and Hamburg), Greece, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom (England). While using the national reports of the ‘Multi‐country Partnership to Enhance the Education of Refugee and Asylum‐seeking Youth in Europe’ as the main resource, the comparative analysis also draws on other existing studies in order to complement the available information. On the basis of desk research, Finland and Italy were further included in the comparison due to their relevance for the topic of concern in regard to the implementation of good practices (Finland) and the hosting of large numbers of young refugees and asylum seekers (Italy).

A Synthesis of Good Practices in Teachers’ Professional Development in Primary and Secondary Schools

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TEACHERS MIGRANT BACKGROUND REPORT

This report describes the results of an activity with teachers from migrant and minority backgrounds. The intention was to elaborate on teacher competences in diverse classrooms. The report is intended to be a valuable source for teacher training institutes as well as professional development organizations from across Europe aiming to prepare teachers for diversity.

The following questions were raised and answered:

• 1. What does it mean to teach in diverse classrooms?
• 2. What works in diverse classrooms?
• 3. What are the areas of expertise needed in diverse classrooms?
• 4. How can teachers acquire this expertise?
• 5. How can we attract more teachers from migrant and minority backgrounds?

LANGUAGE SUPPORT FOR MIGRANT CHILDREN IN EARLY SCHOOL YEARS: MAPPING EUROPEAN POLICIES

The first part of this report gives an overview of the various studies, workshops and expert meetings that were organized within the SIRIUS framework with regard to language policies. However, an important question that was left unanswered, was: why are language policies the way they are? Why have some governments decided to support mother tongue instruction whereas most others have not? Several explanations have been offered – notably the financial aspect and the complications of organizing mother tongue and second language instruction for many different groups of migrant students – but there has not yet been a systematic survey on the reasoning behind the policies.

The second part of this report contains the results of the mapping exercise that was conducted among 12 SIRIUS member states. The survey was not meant to result in extensive analyses of the existing language policies, but to underpin the organization of two trilateral country meetings for policy makers, enabling them to exchange and question their different positions.

Part 3 provides a summary of the trilateral meetings. During these meetings, language policies were discussed from three different national perspectives. The first trilateral meeting was organized in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, with participants from the
Netherlands, Germany and Austria. The second meeting took place in Tallinn, Estonia, with participants from Estonia, Spain and Norway. Countries with divergent language policies were selected, to allow for a real exchange about the decision making behind the policies.

Migrant education opportunities in the Baltic States: strong dependence on the level of school preparedness

The purpose of this policy paper is to explore the national policy measures related to pupils with a migrant background in the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. The paper aims to identify similarities of policy responses to specific educational needs related to migrant background and point out the differences in approaches, bringing forward the examples of successful practice.

The paper serves as an overview of the topic in the Baltic region, which aims to enable mutual learning and inspire the development of most effective strategies in order to shape education policies towards greater inclusiveness to respond to the diverse needs of the learners.

 

National meetings 2014 reports

This document presents the most important conclusions of SIRIUS National Meetings carried out during 2014.

Policy makers meeting report

This document are the minutes of the Policy Makers Meeting that took place on 3-4 April 2014 in Barcelona (Spain).

 

Forum of experiences of policy makers report

This report collects all the conclusions of the Forum of Experiences of Policy makers that took place in June 2014 in Riga (Latvia).

Brochure on Mentoring

This brochure presents a certain range of different kinds of projects making use in one way or the other of the mentoring methodology.

 

Parental Involving Report

This report collects some initiatives of parents and organisations of immigrant or ethnic minority background that can inspire some actions in the field of parents involvement in education.

Peer Reviews

During 2013 the SIRIUS Policy Network organised two peer reviews. The first one, about Equal Educational Opportunities policy (EEO policy), took place in Antwerp (Belgium). And the second one, in Oslo (Norway), was about NAFO actions. You can find the reports on these activities below.

 

Report with Recommendations on Professional Capacity

This report summarizes the SIRIUS activities in 2012 and 2103 in the area of professional capacity focused on the educational position of students with a migrant background. In combination with an overview of the literature, a set of conclusions were drawn and the main recommendations in this particular area were formulated.

 

Report on Citizenship Education

This report on Citizenship Education includes an overview of the literature available about citizenship, citizenship education and citizenship education and diversity. It also looks at the approach to citizenship education in the different countries of the EU, based on information compiled through an online survey completed by SIRIUS experts of 12 countries.

National Round Tables Report

This report collects the main issues discussed during the National Round Tables that took place in 2013. It is structured by two main chapters. The first chapter provides and overview of the National Round Tables (NRT) regarding their topics, the profiles and numbers of participants, the structure and different parts of the events (presentations, working groups etc.), and the main conclusions. The second chapter takes a closer look at the content of the NRTs – the discussed issues and respective recommendations and challenges. An attempt was made to organize the content chapter in a similar manner as was done for the chapter on “Perceptions on the implementation of the Council conclusions on the education of children with a migrant background” of the Report on National Policy Implementation Processes”1, which is based on a synthesis of Focus Group discussions in the members states of the SIRIUS Network, in order to enable a comparison between the arguments of both events.

 

Thematic Workshops

During 2013 we organised three thematic workshops on three topics related to education and migration policies and specially to Early School Leaving. The topics were: school transitions, integration and segregation, and language support policies. You can download the three thematic reports and the synthesis one below: