INTERNATIONAL POLICY ANALYSIS Education Policy – A Swedish Success Story? Integration of Newly Arrived Students Into the Swedish School System JENNY BERGLUND February 2017 n Immigration in Sweden began in the 1950s with labour migration, and continued into the 1980s sustained by a liberal refugee policy. Since then, policy has tight­ened considerably, but Sweden has nevertheless accepted more refugees than any other EU Member State in terms of its population. This was also the case in 2015, when Europe saw the largest amount of refugees seeking asylum since the Second World War. n The Swedish Schools Inspectorate(SSI) has identified factors in the area of school or ­ganisation and teaching in order to improve integration of newly arrived immigrants in schools. For example, each student’s knowledge and experience is reviewed at an early stage so as to individually tailor education to specific needs and ensure that teachers are aware of individual pupils' language level, development and skills and what it means to learn a new language. n Studies have shown that access to native-spoken language facilitates language de­velopment and learning in all school subjects, including Swedish as a second lan­guage. This is why students are entitled to education in their mother tongue, but participation is voluntary. n In Sweden, education of newly arrived students is fostered by the same factors as education in general, such as good communication and cooperation between school boards and teachers and systematic quality control in order to ensure a positive educational environment for all pupils and not only ones that have arrived recently.