Language Minority Students’ Status: One Large Scale Exam and Two Countries

Abstract

Educational policies are dynamic and can be revised when needed. In order to analyze how successful a country is, what their rank is among others and what a country needs to improve, international exams, like PISA, are conducted by authorities. Also, there are many countries with a large immigrant population. In this regard, the educational policies should include some regulations for immigrant students’ education. Canada and Belgium have been chosen as participant countries of this study since they are bi/multilingual countries. Even though they are similar to each other with their immigrant population, the education policies in these countries differ. This study aims to compare the success of the immigrant students in reading skills in both countries as well as their sense of belonging and their parents’ education by utilizing PISA-2015 data. The results display that the immigrant students in Canada have outperformed their peers in Belgium. Furthermore, the immigrant parents in Canada are more educated than those in Belgium, and Canadian immigrant students show lower sense of belonging to school when compared to the peers in Belgium. Although these factors are controlled, the Canadian immigrant students outperform; therefore, some remarks for education policies in bi/multilingual countries can be made.        

Keywords

• PISA,language minority students,Canada,Belgium

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