Students with an immigrant background: NRW is changing education!

Students with an immigrant background: NRW is changing education!

Düsseldorf (IT.NRW) – An alarming increase! In the 2023/24 school year, a shocking 43.0 percent of the over 2.5 million students in North Rhine-Westphalia will be affected by immigration. This means that more than a million young people have a migration history. This proportion has increased dramatically in just five years, from 36.9 percent in the 2018-19 school year. A moment of reflection for education policy!

The immigration hotspots: Wuppertal, Duisburg and Gelsenkirchen

Where are most of these students found? In the cities of Wuppertal (58.6 percent), Duisburg (58.3 percent) and Gelsenkirchen (57.7 percent) the number of students with an immigrant background is booming. In stark contrast, the districts of Coesfeld (22.8 percent), Borken (26.8 percent) and Euskirchen (26.8 percent) have the lowest shares. The gap could hardly be bigger!

But that's not all! In primary schools there is an above-average proportion of around 31 percent of children with a migrant background, while almost half of the students are in comprehensive schools, high schools or vocational colleges. In comparison, only about a quarter of students without a migration history attend primary school. However, almost 60 percent of them are enrolled in higher quality schools. It is a clear inequality that cannot be ignored!

The definition is clear: Immigrant students are those who were born abroad or whose parents come from abroad. The language at home also plays a role: if it is not German, the students fall into this group. Statistics that show important trends, but have only been published in rounded form from the 2019/20 school year for data protection reasons.

Time is of the essence – education policy must react now to meet these challenges!