THE CHILDREN of immigrants are more likely to attend schools designated as disadvantaged, which could lead to further “ghettoisation” of the Irish school system, a leading think tank has warned.
A report by the Economic and Social Research Institute found high levels of “clustering” of immigrant students in certain primary schools, while other primary schools had no immigrants at all.
About 44 per cent of primary schools have no immigrant students, while almost one in 10 primary schools has more than 20 per cent immigrant pupils. The level of “clustering” is less pronounced at second level, where 90 per cent of schools record immigrant students, says the report.
It says clustering is more pronounced in the primary sector because schools tend to draw pupils from their local area, while secondary schools have a wider catchment area. The study says many of the enrolment criteria used by schools tend to favour settled communities, particularly where parents are required to sign up long in advance, and preference is given to the siblings of those already in school.
This “raises concerns as to whether certain groups of students, including immigrants, are concentrated in particular school settings”, says the institute.
The report found there are 45,700 immigrant pupils at primary level out of a total student population of 476,000. It estimates there are 18,000 immigrant pupils at second level out of a total student population of 327,000.
It says immigrants are more likely to attend schools designated as “disadvantaged”, which are less likely to be oversubscribed.
“The differences between DEIS [schools designated as disadvantaged] and non-DEIS schools can be quite stark, and imply an increasing ghettoisation of those schools designated as disadvantaged.
“Because of existing social disparities in processes of school choice, we expect existing lines of inequality are likely to affect the distribution of immigrant students across schools,” says the report.