Excluded or Included by COVID 19? The Impact of COVID 19 on Inclusive Education Efforts with Regard to Migrant Children in Belgium

Abstract

This article presents empirical findings from the H2020 CHILD UP project with an investigation of the impact of the COVID 19 pandemic on migrant children’s education and wellbeing in school. It aims to understand if and how the new education landscape and hybrid learning initiatives have changed inclusive education efforts geared towards migrant students in two Communities of Belgium. ‘Inclusive education’ is a key term often used in pedagogical discourse and describes an ideal situation where the unique, individual educational needs of each child can be met while the child remains in the mainstream classroom. The particular needs of migrant students, however, are often overlooked in inclusive education discourse, and their position can become even more complicated with the added pressures of the pandemic. Through questionnaires and interviews with students, teachers, and other school actors, we found that migrant students were often disproportionately negatively impacted by hybrid and remote learning measures, but that the situation also offered some surprising opportunities for mentoring and peer support and these contrasting outcomes are presented here.

What has been the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on immigrants? An update on recent evidence

“…Qualitative research from Italy, Slovenia and Belgium suggests that a lack of access to digital devices, limited host-country language exposure and less remediation of learning difficulties through direct teacher contact set children of immigrants back in their learning trajectories (Gornik, Dežan and Medarić, 2020 [40]; Redazione, 2021 [41]; Damery and Raziano, 2021 [42]). These problems proved particularly severe for newly arrived migrant and refugee children (D'Angelo and Manzoni, 2021 [43]; Primdahl et al, 2020 [44]; Rude, 2020 [45]).…”