Europe is confronted with the most important refugee crisis since WWII. More importantly, the recent wave of refugees is characterized by the presence of families with young children and unaccompanied minors who  participate  in our schools.

Research shows that Newly Arrived Migrant pupilS (NAMS) have on average more problematic school careers than the rest of the school population (EU, 2013 & 2015). Language barriers for NAMS are higher compared to second or third generation migrants in education and they are often confronted with, imbalanced intercultural encounters. NAMS are a very divers and heterogeneous group, characterized by different educational experiencein their country of origin, different migration histories (and low to severe traumatic migration experiences), or different and in multiple cases difficult home situations after immigration. The language gap at the start of their school career, makes it very difficult for teachers to assess the knowledge and competencies of NAMS. As a result NAMS are often oriented toward lower educational tracks, often without taking into account their own interests and ambitions. 

The Edina-project, a three-year ERASMUS+ project that started in September 2015 and is funded by the European Commission, is aimed at enhancing the educational provision for newly arrived migrant children. The project partners consist of policymakers, schools and researchers from Finland (Helsinki), Belgium (Ghent) and The Netherlands (Rotterdam and Utrecht). In these three member states education is provided for children and adolescents regardless of their residential status. However, criteria regarding the reception, duration of special schooling, transition to regular or to secondary school, constitution of learning environments, and instructional background of teachers greatly vary within and between the countries. At present it is unknown which of these different approaches are the most effective. There is thus a need to identify the most successful strategies to improve the education of NAMS and to make this knowledge available in order to empower schools across Europe with the ultimate goal to improve the prospects of this vulnerable group of pupils.

Our project aims to develop a multi-modular program. This program will include a training module to develop specific teachers’ competencies, a training module to promote active differentiation within the classroom, a toolset and resource base to optimize the reception, observation and transition processes of NAMS. A particular strength of our program is that it will be developed by an interdisciplinary team including schoolteachers, school boards, municipalities, and researchers from pedagogy, didactic, intercultural communication and second language acquisition and is to be used by teachers, schools, municipalities and policy makers. It is based on a thorough qualitative analysis of the situation of NAMS (age 4-18) in the educational system of the three countries involved. The goals are (1) to reduce disparities preventing under or over referral to specialized care, proposing adequate strategies and activities to help teachers, schools and municipalities to support these children, (2) to increase the efficiency of investment in the education of NAMS supporting the development of management programs for this group at city level and, (3) to strengthen education and training paths of school staff fostering the collaboration between schools, municipalities, and researchers nationally and internationally. With this program, we aim to ensure that NAMS may access the level of education that corresponds to their cognitive possibilities in order to reduce early school leaving and to support excellent schooling attainment.

In this symposium, researchers from the three participating universities in the EDINA-project will present recent and ongoing research regarding the quality of the education provision for NAMS and the school careers of NAMS framed within the different education contexts. These research findings will be then linked to the goals of the EDINA-project.

- European commission, 2015. Language learning and teaching in multilingual classrooms. http://ec.europa.eu/languages/policy/learning-languages/multilingual-classrooms_en.htm - European commission, 2013. Study on educational support for newly arrived migrant children. http://bookshop.europa.eu