Foreign girls top of the class

New figures from Statistics Denmark show that 22-year-old female descendants of non-Western immigrants have the same level of education as their ethnically Danish counterparts, reports Danish daily Fyens Stiftstidende.

In 2002, 43 per cent of 22-year-old second generation women were in an education programme, while the number was 51 per cent for Danish women.

In 2012, 61 per cent of the second generation women were in an education programme, the same percentage as Danish girls in the same age group.

Beatrice Schindler Rangvid, senior scientist at the Danish National Centre for Social Research, believes foreign women may soon overtake Danish women when it comes to education.

She explains that foreign girls see education as a way of succeeding in life and making a place for themselves in Danish society. It is also a matter of cultural conditioning, as these girls rarely play sports or join other social activities in their spare time.

“It’s no wonder that they throw themselves into education like this. For the past few years, focus has been on non-ethnic Danes needing extra help in order to get through the education system at all,” Rangvid told Fyens Stiftstidende.

Rangvid does worry about the second generation males, who generally drop out of education programmes in great numbers.

“This is especially true of the vocational training programmes, so there’s no telling how well they’ll succeed, but the recent figures suggest that things are going in the right direction,” said Rangvid.

Bente Højer, who has an academic background in education, has previously written and researched on how best to advise this particular group.

“The real challenge is to provide guidance based on the conditions of the individual. Guidance is also about being able to confront an issue rather than just trying to help. You have to make them think in terms of both results and consequences,” Højer told Fyens Stiftstidende.