European Trade Union Committee for Education

In light of the 2016 EI Action Plan on realising the rights of migrants and refugees, ETUCE would like to inform its member organisations on two recent publications of the European Commission. One report focuses on diversity in the teaching profession while the other addresses the role of education in fostering the economic integration of migrants.

On 9 March 2016, the European Commission published a new study regarding the diversity of the teaching profession in Europe, with a specific focus on teachers with a migrant and/or a minority background.

Concerning the diversity of the teaching workforce, there is a lack of data concerning the migrant or minority background in the different Member States of the European Union. Data is missing due to data protection concerns or because it is not considered as a particular area of policy concern. Furthermore the indicators that are being used, lack consistency. The limited amount of data that is available, however, suggests that teachers and immigrant students in initial teacher education, when comparing them with learners, are underrepresented. Diversity in the teaching staff can be found more in pre-primary education than at all other levels of education. The limited diversity in the education staff can be explained by the barriers many migrant teachers face on their path. The report identifies intersectional and cumulative barriers for teachers with a migrant background regarding accessing (e.g. language barriers) and completing initial teacher education (e.g. lack of cultural and social support groups at the initial teacher education stage) as well as entering (e.g. discriminatory recruitment practices) and staying in the teaching profession (e.g. risk of discrimination in the workplace). The report investigated 67 measures, initiatives and policies that aimed to promote teacher diversity and found that the majority of these measures, initiatives and policies were not solely implemented to increase teacher diversity but to achieve other objectives as well. While these measures, initiatives and policies address barriers of all key points on the pathway of a teacher with a migrant background, there are great differences between EU Member States regarding their effort to increase teacher diversity. In general, greater effort has been done in countries were the learning population is more diverse. Furthermore, this study of the European Commission shows that analysis of the effectiveness of these measures, initiatives and policies is limited.

The full report can be downloaded here.