Education: Hope for newcomers in Europe
with a mandatory semester solely focused on scaffolding the participants’ language skills. The second initiative is called Fast-track (in Swedish Snabbspår). This was introduced in 2016 as: • A response to the general shortage of teachers in Swedish schools • The answer to the search for first language teachers and bilingual classroom assistants, especially in the Arabic language • An attempt to expedite the teacher certification process • A labour market measure aimed at employing at least some refugees who were granted asylum during the last few years The Fast-track courses are 26 weeks long, including in-service training in schools and preschools, and are organised at six universities. 18 According to the interviewee from Lärarförbundet, Fast-track accelerates the process of resuming a teacher profession in Sweden. The language requirement that regulates admission to ULV has been dropped here and education is organised in Arabic solely or in Arabic and Swedish simultaneously. The idea behind this project is to direct a newly arrived migrant with teacher education and experiences towards the path that will eventually lead them back to the teaching profession, and to do so as quickly as possible. After the course, each student receives an individualised action plan based on the course results, identified strengths and weaknesses, validation by the Swedish Council for Higher Education of their university diploma from their home country, and the Swedish National Agency for Education’s response to their request for a teacher certificate. According to the Lärarförbundet interviewee, it is imperative that the Fast-track leads to a teacher certificate. In practice, this means that most of these students must, on completion of Fast-track, also complete the ULV course in order to earn a teacher certificate. There are short-term benefits if students drop out and work in schools as bilingual classroom assistants or support teachers or work at bridging the gap between parents and teachers. However, this means that they miss out on the greater potential achievement: completing their education, earning a certificate, and becoming full-time teachers. It is particularly important that they are certified as multilingual teachers with a culturally diverse background, since almost a quarter of all students in Swedish schools are of immigrant origin.
18 http://www.su.se/lararutbildningar/larare/snabbsparet-for-nyanlanda-larare. Retrieved on 12 April 2017.
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