The European Union increased from 15 to 25 Member States in 2004. The UK government permitted unrestricted access to these new EU citizens, resulting in largescale immigration from Eastern and Central Europe. The unplanned arrival of large numbers of pupils from these new Member States challenged schools. Neither the magnitude nor the impact on schools of these migration flows was understood. It was against this background of a dearth of knowledge and increasing professional uncertainty in a complex and sensitive area of education that the research programme was developed. Its purpose was to provide a better understanding of migration flows and their impact on primary education. This migration inflow confusion dictated that a broad, exploratory approach, employing a multi-method process, be adopted. Methods ranged from the analysis of 27 million pupil registrations to gathering information from individual teachers and parents through interviews and questionnaires. A principal theme provided cohesion and coherence to the five distinct stages of study. Questions relevant to each stage encompassed international, national, LA, school, parent and pupil-level perspectives. The research findings show that the UK government intended to encourage large-scale EU immigration, resulting in Britain’s largest and fastest peacetime inward migration. The migration measuring systems employed were shown to be unfit for purpose. Confusion over ethnic categorisation undermining the accuracy of school census enumerations was discovered. The studies indicated that the WEEU pupil population increased at a faster rate than any other major category and that schools were illequipped to cope with the scale and professional demands of these arrivals. Furthermore, WEEU pupils reduced the average performance of case study schools. The thesis suggests the need for improvements to the national and school census systems. A review of educational procedures for managing unplanned EU migrant flows is also indicated, as is better training for teachers in EAL.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:550144 |
| Date | January 2011 |
| Creators | Jones, Ian Harrison |
| Publisher | University of Warwick |
| Source Sets | Ethos UK |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Electronic Thesis or Dissertation |
| Source | http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/45384/ |
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