Ethnicity as a determinant of educational achievement : immigrant students in Gozitan schools : a case study

Abstract

The main focus of this study was into finding out the problems the children of Gozitan returned migrant parents face in Gozitan schools when their parents uproot them from one country to settle in another. The research is divided into three parts. The first part of the dissertation is devoted to delineating the migration patterns of Gozitans in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and how these patterns demonstrate that due to the extensive rate of outward and inward migration that took place in the last two decades in Gozo, this might mean that the extent of the presence of immigrant students within Gozitan schools might necessitate a structural adjustment. The next section of the research was devoted to finding out how many students had to go through this process of institutional re adjustment. To this end, a head count of Forms 1-4 students was carried out in three secondary schools in Gozo. In the next chapter questionnaires were utilized to find out the problems the students felt that they faced and to see how they thought this affected their progress. Another chapter was focused on what the parents had to say about the difficulties their children had to face when adjusting to the Gozitan educational system. Some of the solutions these parents and students put forward were then incorporated together with some other suggestions which have been mainly derived from existing structures in the Western world which attempt to help 'outsiders' to assimilate gradually into a new educational institution.