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Count Us In: A sense of belonging: Meeting the needs of children and young people newly arrived in Scotland

Appendix 2: Admissions

This section provides the findings from the survey of local authorities (LAs) on the approaches used to address the needs of migrant children and young people. Responses were received from 27 of the 32 LAs.

LAs were asked to provide information on the numbers of children and young people from migrant families who had entered education establishments in their authority over the past four years. Nine LAs provided detailed figures showing the year-on-year data for the numbers of children from migrant families who had enrolled in their schools (see table 2 overleaf). Most of the remaining 18 who responded, gave a total figure showing the overall enrolment between 2004 and 2008. However, four LAs did not collect this information and could not provide the requested data.

Twenty-six LAs reported that they had experienced a significant increase in the numbers of pupils from migrant families entering their schools since 2004. A few LAs had increases of 100%, with the majority of new arrivals coming from Polish families. There are now around 80 main home languages of pupils in Scottish schools. Polish, Urdu, Punjabi, Cantonese, Bengali, Farsi, Lithuanian, Russian and Arabic are among the most common.

New migrants were located across the geographical area of each LA. However, most had settled in the major towns or cities. The key factors contributing to the distribution of new arrivals across schools were identified as availability of affordable housing, employment opportunities and the presence of people with the same religious background. The growth in the numbers of Polish families immigrating to Scotland had led to a significant increase in the numbers of children entering denominational schools in some areas.

Table 2

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