The paper focuses on a comparison of full- and part-time schooling in Germany with regard to expected socio-cultural and/or political differences in the performace of students with a migrant background and studendents with a non-migrant background. This topic is of major interest since the number of full-time schools in Germany increased in the last decade. Associated with this expansion are political and academic expectations to improve the moderate PISA results of German students. Another aspect of implementing full-time schools is to reduce social inequality which, according to large-scale assessments (PISA, TIMSS, and the like), seems to be one major problem of the German educational system. Especially students with migrant background are largely overrepresented in lower school tracks and hence show the lowest rates of employment after leaving school. Corresponding to this, migrant students are expected to be more integrated into the German society, its cultural and political spheres. Again, full-time schooling is seen as one approach to improve the situation and enhance the integration of these students. Interestingly enough, these expectations are yet to be proven. There is a lack of empirical studies in Germany comparing full- and part-time schooling to show whether or not this school type might improve education in general and reduce social disparities in particular. Based on the model of school effectiveness by Scheerens and Bosker (1997), and Ditton (2000) this paper presents first results on the relation between school type and socio-cultural and political outcomes of migrant students. This model assumes that environmental characteristics of schools (e.g. ethnic and/or social composition of neighbourhoods), school culture and learning opportunities (e.g. amount of teachers per student; type and quality of teaching, time on task), partly explain impacts of schooling on student characteristics (Purkey/ Smith 1983; Wang/ Haertel/ Walberg 1993; Seidel & Shavelson, 2007).

To identify possible benefits of full-time schooling a longitudinal study with students of primary and secondary schools in Hamburg, Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg was conducted (N appr. 3.500). By the time of the convention, results of the first wave (spring 2009) will be available showing how and under which conditions migrant students profit from full-time schooling compared to students attending part-time schools. Dependent variables in the analyses are social integration, cultural openness and political attitudes of migrant students.