PIRLS 2001 and 2006 revealed: The primary school systems participating in this international study differ in their success to support the reading achievement of students with a migrant background. Some of their reading achievement can be explained by taking into account their socioeconomic and sociocultural capital. Going beyond this, school and classroom are considered. We will present data gained by an international comparison of four countries that participated in PIRLS 2006: two European countries, Germany and England, and two typical countries of immigration, Canada and USA. It is looked more closely at the respective main immigrant groups` features and factors at school and classroom level are identified which point to the potential of supporting the reading competence of students with a migrant background. We will apply multivariate statistical methods to describe the connection between background variables on school and classroom level and the reading achievement of students with and without a migrant background. We will focus on the question which features might help to reduce the disadvantage of children with a migrant background by comparing results from the four selected countries.

Some states do better in supporting students with a migrant background than others. We are interested in and tackling the question, which schools’ and class’ factors show a positive correlation with supporting students with a migrant background.