There is “no evidence” that migration has reduced the educational attainment of UK-born pupils or parents’ school choice, the body that advises the government on migration has concluded.
The Migration Advisory Committee found that migrants contributed more to school demand than they did to teacher supply, but its research showed that having a higher proportion of migrant pupils appeared to boost results for their native-born classmates.
Today the MAC published an in-depth report assessing the impact on Britain of migration from the European Economic Area, which comprises the countries of the EU plus Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway.
The report has a section analysing the impact of migration of the education system.
According the MAC’s analysis, out of all primary and secondary school-aged children, 72 per cent are UK-born and living in a household with UK-born parents.
The second most common family composition are children born in the UK to non-EEA-born parents, who comprise 9.9 per cent of all school children.
Nine per cent of children have one migrant and one UK-born parent.
The MAC found that there are currently around 11,400 and 13,100 EEA-born primary and secondary school teachers, respectively, working in the UK. This represents 2.6 per cent and 3 per cent of the total number of teachers for each profession.
Migration ‘hasn’t affected school choice’
The report states: “As the share of EEA migrants among the primary and secondary education sector workforce is lower than the share of pupils, EEA migration has increased the demand for primary and secondary education more than the supply of workers.”
However, the committee found no evidence to suggest that higher numbers of migrants in an area led to a reduction in the number of resident children being allocated to their preferred school.
“We investigated whether higher migration levels are correlated with the fraction of parents receiving their first choice of school,” the report says.
“We found no statistically significant relationship between a higher migrant share and the percentage of parents getting their first preference of school.”
Looking at pupil outcomes, the committee found that a larger proportion of pupils who speak English as an additional language (EAL) at a school seemed to boost the performance of their non-EAL classmates.
According to their research, a one percentage point rise in the ratio of EAL to non-EAL pupils was “correlated with a 5.8 percentage point increase in the percentage of non-EAL pupils achieving their target level in Sats scores.
“A similar increase to the EAL to non-EAL ratio at GCSE level was correlated with a 3.8 percentage point increase in the percentage of non-EAL pupils achieving at least five A*-C grades.”
These findings tally with research reported by Tes in July, which found that migrant pupils’ positive attitudes towards education might be “contagious”, improving the attitudes of other pupils at their school.
The MAC concluded: “There is no evidence that migration has reduced school choice or the educational attainment of UK-born pupils.”
The committee recommended that the UK’s post-Brexit immigration model should be “less restrictive” for higher-skilled workers than for those with lower skills, but said there should be “no preference for EEA over non-EEA workers”.
