“From the educational point of view, schools where students are immigrants from a single origin produce better results?”

The most important factor, no matter what you're talking about, is always individual ability. Your intelligence. After that, it's the influence of your immediate environment and variables such as your parents' education. Thirdly, the country of origin and its characteristics; above all, those relating to the education system. In last place would be the destination country. The characteristics of the social environment, particularly your parents' influence and their education, are more relevant than the characteristics of the school in determining the inequality of educational opportunities. But if we are going down that road, what is most important is the social composition of the school, with the role and quality of the teacher in second place. The number of teaching hours that teachers have and students' real study time is reduced when time has to be given over to other matters which are not strictly teaching-related or when information has to be repeated because it has not been understood due to the ethnic, social, cultural and divergent make-up of the student body. In these cases, the danger is that the teacher ends up throwing in the towel. This happens mainly if teachers do not stick to socialistic ideologies or religious values. How teachers go about organising themselves and their preparation is important, but you will also get negative effects if they feel alone, without hope. In Europe, due to the education system imposed in the nineteenth century, the most important aspect of the social environment is the parents' education, as we have already said. This has not always proved successful, but it does contain democratic features: schools funded by the state, which all follow the same system. Things are different in the United States and part of Great Britain, as funding is based on local taxes. The postcode tells you how rich your neighbourhood is and how much local tax is available for education. In some systems, when you go to live in a neighbourhood, you also get a school included in the price of the house. We need to get two things clear. First, they are ghetto schools because they are poor. Second, they tend to have immigrant children from many different origins. A lot of time needs to be spent balancing out these huge differences. This is a bad thing for teachers and children. But if you have a poor school with only Moroccan students, you can specialise. In the Netherlands, we have Catholic schools, Jewish schools, Protestant schools and even Islamic schools. And the Islamic schools are doing better than the comparable state schools. There are more opportunities than in a school where you have 22 nationalities: you can focus, use the common culture and prepare teachers. From the educational point of view, and although this is somewhat controversial, specific schools produce the best results. On a political, social and economic level, that would be quite another discussion. It's very important to get out of the poor neighbourhoods to have any opportunity. I'm not in favour of free choice of school in a radical sense, but I am in favour of parents having greater possibilities of escape. It's true that this also has a negative side to it. Active parents have more possibilities. Even if they are poor immigrants... if they are active they can move more, have a greater choice. And it's usually parents in the higher social classes who move more rather than those in the lower classes. Cruyff says something that is very true: every advantage has its own disadvantage. You can't only have the good side to things. The balance between total freedom and a school by area is the solution. No and we're lost if we forget this. The influence of the country of origin is huge and we cannot ignore the differences between them. Primarily, it is the education system in the country of origin that has the greatest effect. In our work, based on what the PISA 2006 report says, we have analysed data that includes the educational development index, years of compulsory education, the teacher:student ratio and how much of GDP is spent on education. Students with more years of compulsory education perform better in the destination country. The influence is strong for immigrants who arrive aged between 10 and 15 and also for the second generation, because, as we have said, the influence of the parents? knowledge is transcendental. This is not about the economic situation of the country they are leaving, but whether they have constructed a good or poor education system with that money. The second most important aspect is religion. East Asian: Confucianists, Hindus and Buddhists. They are followed by Christian immigrants and, in last place, Muslims. Why? Perhaps Islam defends values that create problems or go against modern society. For example, gender or honour issues, which for them are very important. In the United States, studies have been conducted into how different communities react to discrimination. The Koreans and Vietnamese ignore discrimination. They say, "I'm going to push myself and work hard to show that anyone who insults me is the stupid one." By contrast, the Caribbean community, for whom honour is very important, feel insulted and give in. Something similar with immigrants of Islamic origin happens here. This leads us to another possible motive: they feel more discriminated against than a Buddhist. I do not believe that they are, but that's how they feel. Without the emphasis on status. The usual explanation is that they're very successful because they have an authoritarian system that makes them learn. However, Chinese people living outside Asia and even second-generation immigrants, who speak Chinese at home, achieve these results. I feel that the answer lies somewhere else: on the one hand, the value attributed to education throughout history. It's always been a system of social mobility. However, I also believe that they have neuropsychological advantages: to write simple texts in Chinese, you need to learn around 3,500 characters at a very early age. Through memorisation. You train your brain. You develop it. They also have a clearer number system than other languages. Easier to remember. Everything based on 10. People who come as guest workers have worse results. Why? Because they tend to leave very poor areas and are transferred to one of our cities. From the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century by plane. By contrast, those who emigrate independently tend to do so over several generations: first, to the capital city of their own country, from there, to a neighbouring country and the descendants come to our cities. Either that or they are the ones who were able to fight to achieve this. Generally speaking, they are the more able ones. The results achieved by immigrant students is somewhat better in traditional receiver countries, such as New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States as the entire society is made up of the children or grandchildren of immigrants. In Europe, not only the first or the second generation, but also the third, are continuously being asked, "What are you doing here?" In countries that traditionally receive immigrants, only your skills, and social and economic past matter. Here, it's also your origins. If you want to put it negatively, you could say, "Immigrants, get out. Go to Australia or Canada." However, the results achieved by the native population are better than the immigrants', except in Australia. There is no significant effect by most of the macro-characteristics in the destination country, such as immigration policies, access to nationality or the job market. I'm not saying that what we do isn't important: I am saying that there are no effects on education. Not all changes are the result of politics.