Sweden: 'Immigrant kids need more schooling'

Sweden: 'Immigrant kids need more schooling'

Via the Local:

The Swedish government has revealed a new directive aimed at improving immigrant students’ education and integration into Sweden, revolving around longer compulsory schooling and a shift in lesson priorities.

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Key issues regarding these foreign students, who make up nine percent of Sweden’s primary school student population, revolved around how to integrate the children and raise the quality of their education by considering lesson priorities and additional compulsory schooling.

“For recently arrived children, schooling is the key to integration. Students today are older when they come to Sweden. It puts greater demands on the Swedish schools that receive them,” wrote the government in the statement.

Only 63 percent of the foreign-born students passed their final high school exams in 2010, a trend the government indicated is worsening. 

(source)

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Austria: Kurz tackles immigration at school level

Austria: Kurz tackles immigration at school level

Via the Austrian Times:

Integration Secretary Sebastian Kurz, 26, was at the ministry of interior affairs this week discussing with educationalists whether schools were failing in their mission of integration.

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Going further, he stated how: ‘In the capital, the percentage of people of migrant stock rises to 39%. Vienna like many other European capitals has 150 languages spoken in its schools. At primary school level, one in two pupils is of a migration background, mostly from the Balkans and Turkey.

Under the motto, ‘Integration through achievement’, the question of language was a major theme as schools are frequently the last bastions of community in urban settings. Some Viennese schools in districts like Brigitenau and Ottakring have a migrant intake that is over 80%. 

(source)

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Sweden: 'Smarter' immigrants coming

Sweden: 'Smarter' immigrants coming


Via the Local:

Non-European immigrants are arriving in Sweden with increasingly higher levels of education, according to a new study, although fewer highly-educated immigrants are arriving from Europe and the Nordic countries.

While only 31 percent of immigrants who arrived in Sweden prior to 1991 had some form of post-secondary education, 44 percent of immigrants who moved to Sweden after 2002 have some form of higher education.

The figures come from a comprehensive survey of the level of education of people in Sweden carried out by Statistics Sweden (Statistiska centralbyrån – SCB). 

(source)

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Denmark: Schools to teach Islam class from first grade

Denmark: Schools to teach Islam class from first grade

Via the Copenhagen Post:

Danish students used to only learn about other religions once they had reached seventh grade, but a recent decision by parliament has introduced the teaching of other religions, such as Islam, into the Christianity studies curriculum at a much younger age

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Many of the schools that have adopted the new curriculum are in Copenhagen. The deputy mayor for integration, Anna Mee Allerslev, hopes more schools will follow.

“It’s important that we move away from simply teaching about Christianity in the youngest years,” Allerslev said. “Many young Muslims are drawn toward radical interpretations of Islam because they gain much of their knowledge about the religion from the media. Some think that women have to wear head scarves and they have to hate Christians in order to be a good Muslim. Young Muslims can get a much more balanced relationship to their religion if they are taught about it in school. I have long thought that we need to improve our children’s knowledge on the subject.”

Allerslev added that it could improve integration by challenging the prejudices of Christians about Islam.

(source)

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Derby: Unions stand together in fight against Muslim private school

Derby: Unions stand together in fight against Muslim private school

Via the Derby Telegraph (h/t DW):

THE two biggest teaching unions have announced they will fight the setting up of a Muslim free school in Derby.

Union leaders fear pupils at the planned school may not be taught by qualified teachers and are also concerned that, although it is planned to open in September, it does not yet have a suitable building.

They also say they are worried the school will not follow a "broad curriculum" and that it would harm the city's state schools by attracting away Muslim pupils.

(source)

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Amsterdam: Students protest closure of meditation room

Amsterdam: Students protest closure of meditation room

Via RNW:

Islamic students at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences, HvA, have taken to praying in a stairwell as a protest against the closure of the school’s meditation room. They hope to force the school to provide them with their own prayer room. However, the school board is refusing to meet their demands.

(source)

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