The social and ethnic make-up of the population and the reputation and status of the area are reflected in schools’ make-up of students, reputation, status and student performance. Over the last decade, freedom of choice with regard to schools has also depleted schools in structurally disadvantaged and multicultural areas in that increasing numbers of students are applying for schools in other areas, where the proportion of students with migrant backgrounds is lower. As a consequence, residential segregation and freedom of choice are two external factors that are affecting working conditions for schools to an alarming extent.
The direct impact of migration means that schools need to adapt their organisations, redistribute resources and change their educational approaches so that they can offer equal education to students for whom Swedish is not their native language, who may recently have arrived in Sweden and come from families with lower education standards. Many of these students are in need of various types of support, from study supervision in their native language to initiatives in respect of special needs education.
Teaching in the native language, the first language as support in learning, multilingualism and language development, various support and organisational forms for newly arrived students at primary and lower secondary level and language introduction programmes at upper secondary level, and inclusion and exclusion processes relating to students with migrant backgrounds are a few of the specific aspects that interest us in this research domain. One of the development areas that we are currently working on expanding is the neglected issue of how special primary schools where the percentage of students with migrant backgrounds is higher than in primary and lower secondary schools, their organisation, teaching and learning and relationships with guardians have been influenced by the relatively extensive migration that has taken place in the last few years.
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