School Attainments of Immigrant Pupils in Greece: Needs for an Intercultural Curriculum

Abstract

Until 1980, the repatriated and non-Greek pupils were treated with “compassion” and “charity” in school’s and also in the national exams. One could allege that teachers demanded less from this specific group of pupils — particularly in language modules during the first years of their school attendance (Damanakis 1997). As Tressou (1998) points out, the current policy of Greece leads to the exclusion of special groups of pupils — such as Roma, repatriated and immigrants — from the education system. This exclusion is shaped in three main ‘patterns’:

• a) in the difficulties they face during their initial access to school,

• b) in the immigrants’ restriction and exclusion in school, which usually leads to underachievement or interruption of their school attendance (school dropout),

• c) in the general low school effectiveness of the education system.

The lack of first language/mother tongue teaching to immigrants in the Greek public education system reveals the mono-linguistic character of the educational policy. Moreover, amongst other drawbacks are the allocation of inadequate resources for teaching their mother tongue to immigrants, the non-use of relevant bilingual materials, books and textbooks and the non-implementation of teaching Greek as a second or foreign language to immigrants. As a result of the above, immigrants do not have equal opportunities for learning compared with the indigenous pupils. Furthermore, this lack of equal opportunities is also reflected in the outcomes of the educational process and, more specifically, in their difficulty to participate and complete with success all educational levels — school drop-out (Palaiologou/Evangelou 2003).