Presently Europe is confronted with the need to cater hundreds of thousands of migrants taking refuge from Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan and ensure the education of migrant students. The importance of education  for refugee communities and migrants is based  not only on the Convention of human rights, but also on the fact that schooling is an essential means for ensuring life continuity, job prospects, social integration, peer relationships, self-esteem (Kia-Keating & Ellis, 2007; INEE, 2010).  

However, literature addressing education of immigrant or refugee children lists a variety of barriers that are hindering education integration and negatively affecting education attainment of these children (Kovacs-Cerovic & Vulic, 2017). The PISA research on disparities between migrant and domicile children directed educational policy analysts’ spotlight on immigrant children already in the early 2000s by showing that students whose parents are immigrants have weaker performance than native students in some countries on PISA, even after controlling for socio-economic background and language (OECD, 2004).   

The dropout rate of refugee/migrant children in most countries is much higher than for the domicile group (NESSE, 2008; OECD, 2015b). Refugee parents are hampered by stress, trauma, and/or lack of social capital in the new situation (Vlajković, Srna, Kondić, & Popović, 2000).  

Migrant students are more likely to be placed in groups with lower curricular standards   (Bartlett, 2015), or in special education schools  (NESSE, 2008); quality of the teaching–learning process can be endangered by oversized classes and lack of equipment (OECD, 2016); teachers’ pedagogical competencies for working in multicultural environments might be low; their expectations for the educational outcomes of refugee/migrant children might also be low (OECD, 2016); differences between home and host country curricula can create a difficulties for refugee/migrant children in a variety of ways (NESSE, 2008; UNHCR, 2015); acquiring the language of instruction is a key challenge for refugee/migrant children (UNHCR, 2015); lack of finances, non-conducive ethos, and poor school organization can create loopholes that have the potential of reversing previous  integration efforts (OECD, 2016). 

Recommendations for overcoming these barriers and pitfalls include measures as language integration, early childhood education and care, parental engagement, limiting concentration in disadvantaged schools, building capacity of schools and teachers, and limiting tracking and grade repetition (OECD, 2015a; Nusche, 2009).

While target countries of migration have been addressing many of these recommendations in order to ensure effective education of migrant children and youth,   Serbia was until recently only a transit country for migrants aspiring to move on  to more developed countries and its education system was unprepared for integration of migrant students. This changed during Autumn 2016, more migrants stay for a longer period in the country and a number of schools started to prepare and accept migrant students from collective refugee centers. Since the education system in Serbia never before faced a similar challenge, nor did it develop the appropriate policy measures widely, the process these schools are piloting is a unique opportunity to observe and register the education change entailed in enrolling migrant students.

In this paper we explore the processes of education change at school level accompanying the preparation for and the actual integration of migrant students, with the aim to (a)   identify key features of the process of inclusion of migrants based on the perspectives of various actors in the education process; (b) provide an analysis of main strengths and areas for improvement of schools  (c) compare characteristics of the inclusion process in   schools differing from each other in several relevant aspects and (d) formulate recommendations for other schools in Serbia and in other countries in a similar situation that start including students with a migrant background.

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