Oost west, school best: Kunnen migrantenleraren het thuisgevoel en de schoolresultaten van migrantenleerlingen verbeteren?

This study has examined whether the achievement gap between migrant and non-migrant students can be explained through migrant students’ weakened sense of belonging at school. Furthermore, this research tested if this assumed negative relationship could be weakened through the presence of an intercultural school climate and migrant teachers at school. For this research, multilevel data was used from PISA 2018, which contained information from 2575 15-year old Portuguese students (level 1) from 152 schools (level 2). A multilevel analysis revealed that there are significant negative relationships between migrant students and their math, reading, and science scores. However, no significant relations are found between student migrant background and sense of belonging and between students’ sense of belonging and school results. Therefore, the achievement gap cannot be explained through migrant students’ weakened sense of belonging. Furthermore, this analysis has shown that the presence of an intercultural school climate and migrant teachers have no significant influence on the relationship between migrant students and their sense of belonging. The conceptual model thus does not hold for Portugal. Further research is needed to establish whether the Portuguese findings can be generalized to other (European) countries.