Ethnic minority students in European school systems

A crucial test of Western societies' potential of integrating immigrants is the educational attainment of children of immigrants. Do they fare much worse than the majority population? And do quite recently arrived non-European groups fare worse than the traditional European labour immigrants? The results from recent studies show, rather surprisingly, that children of immigrants overall show educational careers not so dissimilar from others: while some groups perform quite poorly, the educational aspirations are in general high among minority students. Pockets of misfortune exist in that some immigrant categories show high rates of early school-leaving, but empirical evidence overall defies the gloomy picture of ethnic minority exclusion.