The number of immigrant background students in the Spanish educational system, as in other European countries, has undergone significant growth in the last three decades, modifying the demographics of students present in schools. According to the Ministry of Education and Vocational Training (Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional, 2020) the students of foreign origin in Primary Education account for 40.90% and 11.58% of the total school population. The above is more evident in public schools with 12.0 % of immigrant students in the Community of Andalusia (context of the study), reaching up to 15.5 % in the province of Almería. Moreover, 95.6% of immigrant background students are enrolled in public schools.

The study of educational trajectories is a crucial issue both for the future of immigrant background students and for society in general, since their success to some extent, can be the precursor of social inclusion (Cutmore, 2018). Literature shows that most of the scientific evidence has developed models that tends to blame students who do not manage to go through their basic schooling in the time and form established by the educational system (Motti-Stefanidi & Masten, 2017). However, there is not much evidence on the educational trajectory that immigrant background students go through once they entered the system, there is thus very little data about the critical moments in which their educational trajectory is broken or the variables that affect their paths. Without such information it will be impossible to implement programs that help achieve the success of these students when the learning of immigrant background students will be affected in part by how well schools understand the cultures and unique experiences of these students.

Against this backdrop, the study has a double purpose: to analyse the educational trajectories of immigrant background students and to determine to what ex­tent some sociodemographic variables (gender, origin, length of stay in Spain or home language) affect these careers. The sample was constituted by 172 students (52.3 % female, 47.6 % male) aged be­tween 6 and 16 years (M= 12.6; SD = .79).  Four aspects were analysed: 1) the mobility of the schools through which these students navigated, 2) the grade in which they have been enrolled and its relationship with chronological age, 3) the repetition rate, and 4) the graduation rate or the higher educational level they achieved in their schooling (Paris & Alim, 2017).

With this work we are interested in documenting this gap in the scientific literature by exploring which sorts of variables enhance students’ successful schooling of immigrantbackground students and gaining more insight in the extent to successfully navigate the Spanish educational system. Such information might have broad practical implications for policymakers and teachers involved in supporting the effectiveness of programs among students in vulnerable conditions.

The findings confirmed that participants seemed to have followed very complex, diverse routes through Spanish education although there are differences in terms of gender and mother tongue. Women in the sample exhibit trajectories more in line with the traditional paths, since their repetition rate is lower. Whereas the school mobility is particularly high in the case of students with a language different from the school’s vehicular language. In a previous study (Rodríguez-Izquierdo y Darmody, 2019; Rodríguez-Izquierdo, 2018) it was noted that the linguistic competence report is not always available at the time of incorporation at the new school so that the start of linguistic support is delayed or interrupted. This high mobility of schools does not facilitate neither the follow-up that would especially be beneficial for these students nor the inherently complicated socialization process in adolescence (Rodríguez-Izquierdo, González-Falcón and Goenechea, 2020).

A non-experimental research design was applied via an exploratory type of documental nature through which the individualized school trajectory of the students was reconstructed. Procedure The selection of the participants was carried out by means of an incidental sampling in¬ 24 public schools of Andalusia with a high percentage of students of immigrant background and willing to collaborate in the study. Interviews were conducted with the principles and/or counselors of the selected schools where the aims and scope of the research were explained. Then, the ethical consents were signed, guaranteeing the confidentiality of the information and the subsequent treatment according with the ethical principles contained in the Declaration of Helsinki. Participants The sample consisted of 172 students aged be¬tween 6 and 16 years (M= 12.6; SD = .79) and 52.3% were females. The average stay time in Spain was 6 years (DT =3.4). The home languages were extremely varied: 38.9% Spanish, 57.6 % other 12 different languages and 3.5%bilingual. Regarding the geographic origin we¬ had a variability of 25 different countries, the most numerous were Morocco (31.5%) and Romania (15%). Data Analysis Firstly, descriptive statistics was applied. Secondly, the statistically significant differences of the socio-demographic variables were verified; before the analysis of differences, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test was applied to confirm normal distribution of the population to determine the use of parametric or nonparametric tests in the comparison of means. The assumptions of normality and homocedasticity (Levene) were met, thus parametric tests were applied. Specifically, the t-student was implemented. Fi-nally, the magnitude of the difference between variables was determined, through effect size or Cohen’s d (small < 0.50; moderate 0.50-0.79; large≥ 0.80). Measures Dependent variables: Mobility of students: number of schools through which students pass through their school path. Enrolment grade: percentage of students attending the corresponding grade by age. Repetition rate: percentage of students who repeat one or more grades during their academic journey. Graduation rate: percentage of students who complete Primary Education at age 12 and Secondary Education at age 16. Independent variables: Gender: male and female). Geographical origin: there are 15 different countries. Stay time in Spain: students not born in Spain who arrived ¬between 1 and 3 years ago, between 4 and 6 years, between 7 and 10 years or more than 10 years ago. Home language: students who have Spanish as a mother tongue and students who has other mother tongue than the school’s vehicular language.

Findings show that the educational trajectories of immigrant background students were very diverse in terms of the variables studied. However, overall, their trajectories do not correspond to the expected traditional way of what is perceived as “school success”: a single school or two during the educational journey, schooling in the grade that corresponds by age, no repetition or minimum and graduation by the expected age. Consequently, due to the more heterogeneous school projects found in these students they possibly take the risk of being stigmatised as “unsuccessful” according to conventional standards of what is seemed successful understood as more linear and conventional trajectories. The above marks traits are usually linked to the concept of school failure, and in general terms, students of immigrant background might be at risk of being discouraged to continue with their educational career (Cabrera et al., 2019; Miyar-Busto, 2017). Nevertheless, the participants repetition rate is consistent with those provided by the Ministry of Education (2018) for the overall of students. Thus, “immigration” should begin to be dissociated as the only explicative-variable from a phenomenon that has been called school failure (Arroyo, Constante and Asensio, 2019) In conclusion, the findings call into question the cosified vision of these students since they break with homogenising perspectives on “immigrants” as a label and encourage researchers to critically to move beyond established social categories by considering continuous variables, intragroup variation, and the intersectionality paradigm. It seems not fair to talk about a homogeneous trajectory of immigrant background students, rather, we should talk about heterogeneity of trajectories with patterns shared with other groups of students in situations of risk of social exclusion. Dato also invite to reflect on the limitations of the school system to respond responsibly to students who are in positions of social vulnerability (Rodríguez-Izquierdo & González-Faraco, 2021).

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