Education International Research
language acquisition, social relations, learning academic subjects, and adjusting to school culture and broader values in society. Furthermore, inclusion is important since other students can be effectively used as a resource for learning (Mickelson & Nkomo, 2012). Once again, a well-designed strategy (and sometimes social engineering) must accompany the effort. The most detrimental organisational model for newly-arrived children’s opportunities is having them in separate schools, their own buildings, or separate classes for a prolonged time and with only limited opportunities to interact with other students. The most detrimental pedagogical approach is to only focus on the acquisition of the majority language in the initial years (until their language is “good enough”) and to only receive instructions by language teachers. Both statements are clearly described and argued for in the four contributions in this volume. The Italian system is mostly distinguished at policy level as inclusive, while the Swedish, German, and Spanish systems are interchangeably using both separate and inclusive models. However, the trend in all countries seems to be more reliance on separate models at local level. It is here that previously mentioned national guidance, support and monitoring structures would be particularly important. In all four contributions, two common features can be identified with regards to the organisation of reception: (i) There is a lack of coordination and cooperation between various stakeholders across the entire educational system. From the level of schools (including the lack of internal cooperation between subject-matter teachers and bilingual classroom assistants, as pointed out by Bunar), between schools in the same municipality to the national level, lack of cooperation between municipalities and a lack of coordination between local authorities and national government pervades. Two obvious consequences are insufficient use of resources invested in, for example, cultural mediators or other support staff and the lack of dissemination of good practices between schools and municipalities. (ii) The second common feature is the lack of resources. Resources are needed to provide newly-arrived students with extra-curricular help and additional assistance in the classroom, including the employment of multilingual teachers. Resources are also needed to organise the professional development of school staff. When extra resources are disseminated, in some countries (i.e. in Italy as reported here by Grigt), it is often done in the form of a financial model that allocates funds to the local level through short-term projects. Furthermore, the municipalities compete for a limited amount of funds, which means that ultimately the quality of education is dependent on the administrators’ skills in writing applications. Sustainable financing is a prerequisite for upholding legally defined intentions and for the development of local practices. Indeed, the Swedish model could 6