A deeper insight into the ethnic make-up of school cohorts: diversity and school achievement

While the share of non-native students in a class is expected to have a non positive effect on school achievement, little is said about the heterogeneity of the ethnic minority make-up. Ethnic diversity can stimulate the creativity of students, can push them to be proficient in the instructional language, can reduce the scope of ethnic identification with all its possible drawbacks, but it may also worsen social interactions among pupils and make the job of teachers more difficult. We exploit the within school cohort variation in ethnic diversity of a rich data-set about primary education in the Netherlands to investigate whether ethnic diversity matters for school achievement, for whom it matters and which can be the other mechanisms it may generate. We find that ethnic diversity has a positive impact on the test scores of minority students, especially for language skills and older students. We also find a negative relationship between ethnic diversity and the school social environment.