Human Resources and Skills Development Canada
Symbol of the Government of Canada

Human Resources and Skills Development Canada

www.hrsdc.gc.ca

Reading skills of young immigrants in Canada: the effects of duration of residency, home language exposure and schools - June 2008

1. Introduction

Ageing Canadian population, combined with declining fertility rates pose challenges for future population and labour market growth in Canada. Increasingly, immigration is seen as a panacea for Canada. As is shown in Figure 1, Canada's labour force growth is slowing and immigrants will constitute a growing part of population and labour force growth.

Historical and projected change in Canadian population by source (1976 – 2026)
Click here to enlarge

It is expected that immigrants will account for all net labour force growth by 2011 and for all net population growth by 2031 (Denton, Feaver and Spencer, 1999).

Canadian immigrants often arrive with children who will eventually enter the Canadian labour market. In 2002, over 220,000 immigrants arrived in Canada and a significantly large proportion of them (37%) were between the ages of 0 and 24. These young immigrants are an important addition to the current as well as the future labour force. Their successful integration in the Canadian economy (education and labour market participation) is, therefore, of utmost interest.

High reading skills lie at the basis of all learning. They empower effective learning and training, through which people develop into productive members of the workforce and the community. High reading skills should be developed early to benefit from ongoing advantages which start with formal education, continue through the working life and well into the retirement ages.

The main purpose of this paper is to examine the skill development of immigrant children (15 year olds) using data from the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the Youth in Transition Survey (YITS) and to examine its implications for public policy. The research will focus on answering the following four questions of interest:

  • Does the age at which immigrant children arrive in Canada have an impact on their academic performance in schools?
  • Does exposure to different languages at home affect reading skills in English or French of immigrants?
  • What are the relative influences of individual, family and school factors on the academic performance of 15 year old immigrants? How do they differ from their Canadian counterparts?
  • Does reading performance by immigrants vary between schools?

The report is organized in the following way. Section two presents a brief literature review. Section three describes the data and methodology used throughout the analyses. Section four presents descriptive results of immigrant reading scores. Section five of the report focuses on multivariate analyses where reading scores are analysed with multiple control variables. The fifth section presents results from multilevel analyses where the reading scores were analyzed simultaneously at individual and school level. Finally, the report is concluded in section six.

Footer

Date Modified:
2008-06-11