PW:
In the UK, children from immigrant families tend to perform better than their peers, making the country a rare bright spot in the latest global education rankings. The issue for policymakers is that no one really knows why.
First- and second-generation immigrant students in the UK scored, on average, 1.2 points higher than non-immigrant students across the OECD’s math, science and reading tests. That puts Britain in the company of Cyprus, Montenegro and Malta as the only European countries where they outperform children with at least one native parent.
The findings are striking in a country where concerns about immigration dominate the political agenda and there’s widespread discontent over declining public services.
It’s a “success story” that “has been well-attested for a while now,” said Lucinda Platt, a sociologist at the London School of Economics. However, she added: “it remains a bit of a puzzle.”
“We don’t really have a definite answer, only possible explanations,” said Nuni Jorgensen, researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory.
In science, countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual study reported an average gap of about 40-points between students with and without an immigration background. That corresponds to roughly two years of learning, and has barely changed since 2015. In the latest figures France remains below the OECD average, while the gap has swelled to around 80 points in Germany.
In the UK, by contrast, that difference closed to zero in 2025, from around 20 points in a decade before.
One part of the explanation may be the former Conservative government’s education reforms, that refocused schools toward making sure pupils acquire knowledge, rather than more broadly defined skills.
Academics point instead to a mix of migrant selection, language, aspiration and the structure of the school system.
“Countries whose migrant populations skew toward highly educated, higher-skilled arrivals, as the UK’s does, tend to see smaller gaps, since parental education is one of the strongest predictors of a child’s school performance,” said Jorgensen. The 2021 census shows that 44% of adult residents born outside the UK have a higher education qualification, compared with 31% of UK-born residents.
But the country also welcomes many immigrants in lower-skilled jobs, and Platt’s research suggests deprivation has a smaller effect on educational outcomes among pupils from minority groups than on White British pupils.
Ethnic-minority pupils enter school substantially behind White British kids, according to Christian Dustmann, an economist at University College London, but pull off a “remarkable catch-up,” once they have learned the language.
DonSergio7 on
Who woulda thunk it that if you provide kids of migrants with the right environment and tools to catch up with their peers that outcomes would indeed be similar for them?
2 Comments
PW:
In the UK, children from immigrant families tend to perform better than their peers, making the country a rare bright spot in the latest global education rankings. The issue for policymakers is that no one really knows why.
First- and second-generation immigrant students in the UK scored, on average, 1.2 points higher than non-immigrant students across the OECD’s math, science and reading tests. That puts Britain in the company of Cyprus, Montenegro and Malta as the only European countries where they outperform children with at least one native parent.
The findings are striking in a country where concerns about immigration dominate the political agenda and there’s widespread discontent over declining public services.
It’s a “success story” that “has been well-attested for a while now,” said Lucinda Platt, a sociologist at the London School of Economics. However, she added: “it remains a bit of a puzzle.”
“We don’t really have a definite answer, only possible explanations,” said Nuni Jorgensen, researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory.
In science, countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual study reported an average gap of about 40-points between students with and without an immigration background. That corresponds to roughly two years of learning, and has barely changed since 2015. In the latest figures France remains below the OECD average, while the gap has swelled to around 80 points in Germany.
In the UK, by contrast, that difference closed to zero in 2025, from around 20 points in a decade before.
The figures [published Tuesday](https://archive.is/o/ddU61/https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/2026/09/pisa-2025-results-volume-i_5265bfb1.html) come from the OECD’s Program for International Student Assessment, which tested over 760,000 15- and 16-year-olds across 91 countries. It’s closely watched by politicians and policymakers to gauge the health of national education systems.
One part of the explanation may be the former Conservative government’s education reforms, that refocused schools toward making sure pupils acquire knowledge, rather than more broadly defined skills.
[England](https://archive.is/o/ddU61/https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pisa-2025-national-report-for-england) is now in the global top ten in all three areas the OECD tests. Yet immigrants are also performing well in Scotland, which did not implement England’s reforms, and whose PISA scores have otherwise deteriorated.
Academics point instead to a mix of migrant selection, language, aspiration and the structure of the school system.
“Countries whose migrant populations skew toward highly educated, higher-skilled arrivals, as the UK’s does, tend to see smaller gaps, since parental education is one of the strongest predictors of a child’s school performance,” said Jorgensen. The 2021 census shows that 44% of adult residents born outside the UK have a higher education qualification, compared with 31% of UK-born residents.
But the country also welcomes many immigrants in lower-skilled jobs, and Platt’s research suggests deprivation has a smaller effect on educational outcomes among pupils from minority groups than on White British pupils.
Ethnic-minority pupils enter school substantially behind White British kids, according to Christian Dustmann, an economist at University College London, but pull off a “remarkable catch-up,” once they have learned the language.
Who woulda thunk it that if you provide kids of migrants with the right environment and tools to catch up with their peers that outcomes would indeed be similar for them?