Education for a Bright Future in Greece by OECD

Author:OECD
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Education
ISBN: 9789264298750
Publisher: OECD Publishing
Published: 2018-04-18T16:00:00+00:00

Refugee students need to learn Greek to do well at school

A major issue has been language: refugee students typically do not speak Greek upon arrival and require some time to reach a level where they are able to learn other subjects in the language. Even for students with an immigrant background who have integrated into the formal system, speaking the language of assessment at home has proved to affect academic performance. Almost 60% of first-generation immigrant students in Greece don’t speak the language of assessment at home, which contributes to the 20-point difference in reading performance between immigrant and non-immigrant students (OECD, 2015[105]).

The balance between bringing non-native speakers up to a sufficient level in Greek language where they are able to study other subjects and integrating them into the regular education system is difficult to strike. Students interviewed by UNICEF and REACH explained that the language barrier was the main reason they dropped out of formal education. An unaccompanied 16-year-old from Iraq reported that:

I came here to continue studying but it’s not good, because it is all in Greek and most of it we don’t understand. For three months I used to go – they registered me – but nothing changed in those three months and I quit, because I went to school, I woke up at seven a.m. and I just came back. I learnt nothing there (UNHCR, UNICEF and IOM, 2017[109]).

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