Are 5% of UK secondary students born overseas?

The 2011 edition of the OECD 'Education at a Glance' provides a fascinating insight into the percentage of students in UK schools who are born overseas. According to Table A5.2. approximately 4.8% of UK students taking part in the PISA 2009 tests were born overseas and 5.8% had parents who were born overseas. 89.4% were born in the UK as were their parents. This is broadly in line with the OECD average and compares with Ireland where 6.8% of students taking part in the PISA tests were first generation migrants but only 1.4% were second generation migrants.

Education at a Glance: OECD Indicators (2011) enables countries to see themselves in the light of other countries’ performance. Indicator A5 'Does student background affect student performance' compares the performance of students in PISA reading tests by migrant background as well as by socio economic background.

The report confirms that:

• There is little difference in performance in reading between UK second generation students (¹⁾ and students without a migrant background (² )
• There is a significant performance difference (more than 30 points) between UK first generation (³⁾ students and students without a migrant background
• The strength of the relationship between performance and socio-economic background not statistically signicantly different in the United Kingdom from the OECD average impact.
• An enduring difference remains between migrant and non-migrant background UK students even after they are matched by socio-economic status (⁴⁾ although this difference is below the OECD average

1. Second generation students are defined as those who were born in the UK but whose parents were born overseas
2. Students without a migrant backgrond are defined as those were were born in the UK and whose parents were born in the UK
3. First generation students are defined as those who were born overseas and whose parents were born overseas
4. Socio-economic background is measured by the PISA index of social, cultural and economic status, which is based on information, provided by students, about their parents’ education and occupations and their home possessions, such as a desk to use for studying and the number of books in the home.