Analysis of Spanish policies for the integration of immigrant schoolchildren

The Organic Law on the Improvement of the National Education Quality (Ley Orgánica de Reforma de la Calidad Educativa) readdressed one of the most significant educational issues: educational policies related to immigrant students. Therefore, this is an appropriate moment to evaluate these types of policies in three singular Spanish regions: Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia. This article presents an analysis of the measures taken in three Spanish regions: Madrid, Catalonia and Andalusia in response to students’ reception, acceptance and enrolment of immigrant students. A qualitative methodology based on the comparative method is used. Diverse similarities, but also specific characteristics and differences, can be found among the three models associated with each region. There are several significant differences that can be appreciated, such as the institutional role, as well as other specific measures. However, singular features are also identified, such as the diverse policies for the use of the vehicular language in each of the cases. Finally, the comparisons highlight various critical aspects, such as attention devoted to the students’ native language and progress towards intercultural education in school strategies and planning.


Background
The Spanish education system is presently immersed in a process of change, motivated by, among other reasons, a wish to become more modern, to increase its ranking in international evaluations and to improve quality. The Law on the Improvement of Quality in Education (Ley Orgánica de Mejora de la Calidad Educativa) came into effect in January 2014, although implementation of the reforms began in earnest in the 2014-2015 school year. This law does not make any reference to intercultural education, despite the existence of an academic theoretical corpus in Spain (Osuna Nevado 2011) that argues for the value of intercultural education for native and migrant students (Garreta and Bochaca 2011;Rego and Lorenzo 2015).
The rules on migration are usually designed at the state level in Europe, although the 'supra-state' and 'sub-state' levels have been assuming increasing responsibility. As Campomori and Caponio (2013) remark with respect to the Italian case, regions have been acquiring wider autonomy in terms of social policies in many States of the EU, including integration policies for immigrants, with differential impacts on social inclusion (Huddleston, Niessen, and Dag Tjaden 2013). Obviously, the greater the degree of decentralisation and administrative differentiation within a specific state, the more important it will be to analyse the measures for integration of immigrants at a regional level.
In Spain, a great deal of responsibility for educational policy relating to the education of immigrant pupils resides with public administrations at the regional level, using the strategies of the Autonomous Communities. This situation has been analysed in various recent studies (Llevot-Calvet 2006;Pastrana et al. 2007;Alcalde 2008;Siqués Jofré and Perera 2009;Martínez Usarralde 2010;Castaño and Pons 2011;Del Olmo Pintado 2012;Garreta 2013). In fact, this variability can also be seen throughout the European Union (Alegre 2008;Martínez Usarralde 2008;Eurydice 2009;Catarci and Fiorucci 2015) and is reflected in the different initiatives proposed: bilateral agreements with the countries of origin, and teacher training or publication of information for the family about the education system, among others.
This article focuses on the analysis of the measures that three autonomous communities (regions) have taken to ease the reception, integration and education of students from 3 to 16 years old with diverse nationalities (mainly: Latin American, Eastern Europe and Maghreb). The choice of these three communities was based on the fact that these regions are pioneers in intercultural mediation and are communities that have contributed large portions of their budgets to programmes that promote school attendance of diverse communities (Federación de Enseñanza de Comisiones Obreras (CCOO) 2015). Likewise, the percentages of minority pupils in these three communities (Catalonia 12.4%, Madrid 15.2% and Andalucía 6.1%the average is 9.1% in Spain) are representative for Spain in general. 1 This work aims to describe the policies and measures undertaken related to immigrant students, to revise and analyse the progress in this field and to support future decisions.

Design and methodology
We chose our methodology from the scientific discipline of comparative education because of the wide opportunities it provides for configuring the sociocultural world. In the same context, it shows how these have followed the logic of systemic structuring, thus enriching our systematic knowledge and at the same time, highlighting the idea of evolutionary opening of the social praxis (Schriewer 2010, 25).
We try to refer to one of the classic 'uses' or purposes of comparative education defined by Sadler in 1900, which is none other than to bring us closer to other socioeducational realities different from our context, with the aim of seeking alternative orientations that can be of use and thus reinterpret the problems presented by our own (Sadler 1900, 12). This tendency is particularly valid, sometimes under the heading of the model of 'borrow and copy' and currently recognised under the Anglo-Saxon concept of transfer (Halls 1990;Noah 1990;Schriewer 1990;Phillips 2000), or to 'build bridges between cultures' (Crossley 2008). As Larsen (2010, 8) states, Cowen (2009) focuses on recognising the intrinsic complexity that these studies suppose, both in transfer and borrowing, and agrees that rather than thinking of the policies of transfer as linear processes headed in one direction, we should consider their reciprocal and circular nature.
In this research, we have opted for an analytical strategy that helps us understand, describe, explain, find causal links and suggest public policy action lines to integrate immigrant pupils.

Policy for integrating immigrant pupils in Madrid
The Plan Estratégico Ciudadanía e Integración [Strategic Citizenship andIntegration Plan] (2011-2014) is divided into various fields, among which there is a field dedicated to education, which is the responsibility of the Department of Education, Youth and Sports. This is, in turn, structured around four general objectives that have different specific policy measures for educational attention to immigrant students.
The most notable aspect of the first objective, 'to promote the learning and integration of immigrant pupils in the education system', is compensatory education. Compensatory education involves the creation and maintenance of a set of measures for educative intervention with a compensatory character, whereby social-educational disadvantageous situations that appear in specific collectives attending the school can be positively modified (Altarejos-Martínez 2006). This is aimed at children in primary and compulsory secondary education who are socioeducationally disadvantaged by their belonging to ethnic and/or cultural minorities, for social, economic or geographic reasons, who lag significantly behind in school due to the difficulty of adaptation and includes specific requirements for support derived from later incorporation into the education system or irregular attendance.
The resolution of 10 July 2008, by the Viceconsejería de Educación (the responsible counselling for education affairs), sets out instructions for organising educational compensation in the field of basic education. It includes measures aimed at incorporating immigrant children into compulsory education. Notable aspects are: • Increasing coordination between the different professionals who intervene in schools to work more effectively on the difficulties that foreign pupils could encounter and to reinforce access to compulsory secondary education among the immigrant population. However, this coordination is still performed on a voluntary basis, with no existing practical measures to encourage such initiatives. • Promoting or maintaining programmes that contribute to overcoming linguistic and curricular deficits, such as the Programme for Insertion into the Education System, as a temporary programme of linguistic adaptation for newly arrived children joining the education system of the host community who lack knowledge of the bilingual reality they are entering. This fact can produce significant misalignments in cases where the student origins are highly diverse. In fact, in the Spanish case, the countries of origin of the immigrant students are Morocco (34.1%), China (8.7%) and Ecuador (8.03%). • Promoting mechanisms to avoid the mobility of teaching staff who are working in schools with a high percentage of foreign pupils. • Reinforcing the specific programme of support for migrant children and their families in primary and secondary schools. • Creating specific groups of educational compensation, preferably aimed at pupils enrolled in the first two years of compulsory secondary education who have serious difficulty adapting to the classroom and who are at risk of abandoning the education system. The contents are organised around the linguisticsocial and scientific-mathematic fields, and the action is organised through workshops. • Educational compensation, aimed at 15-year-old pupils with serious difficulties in adaptation or who have followed a process of late or very irregular schooling, which hinders their incorporation and promotion at a particular stage.
In the second objective, 'encouraging coexistence in the education system', a plan for reception is envisaged which includes guidance from professionals in the school. Leisure and sports activities are organised and encouraged to promote coexistence and favour interrelations between pupils; educational material in different languages is distributed and promoted, and the norms of coexistence are applied in the schools when disruptive behaviour take place. Finally, it proposes inviting immigrant parents to participate in the parents' associations of the schools.
The third objective, 'to promote the coordination and optimisation of the resources for attending to immigrants in educational contexts', envisages action aimed at coordinating the professionals in the social services with those in schools and mediators, as well as the mediators and technical teachers for community service in the schools. Key points are: • The Itinerant Service of Support for Immigrant Pupils, which assesses immigrant pupils and their families through the development of reception plans, intercultural education and resources and materials for teaching Spanish as a second language. Finally, the fourth objective, 'evaluating the situation of immigration in the educational field', contains measures for integrating foreign children in the educational context, such as encouraging the circulation of guides to educational resources in the Department of Education and the creation of awards to recognise schools with immigrants and the efforts by immigrant pupils in all areas of teaching. Similarly, the development and dissemination of studies that explore different aspects of the education and integration of immigrant pupils in the Community of Madrid has been proposed with the aim of promoting research related to immigrant pupils. These objectives continue to be valid, as seen in the Community of Madrid's Strategic Plan for Citizenship andIntegration (2011-2014).

Policy and integration of immigrant pupils in Catalonia
The move towards the current organisational structure began when power over education was transferred to the Catalonia Government (Generalitat)  This plan mainly envisaged aspects relating to the learning of the language, without taking into account other fundamental aspects of reception, such as emotional, relational and social cohesion. Aware of this, the department drew up a new document and in 2004, the Plan for the Language and Social Cohesion was passed as part of the Interdepartmental Plan for Immigration. The same year, one decree created the General Subdivision of Language and Social Cohesion, with the aim of guaranteeing the equal opportunity to the access of high-quality education, a respect for cultural diversity and the consolidation of Catalan as the axis of a multilingual education project, based on the values of coexistence, equity, social inclusion and the integration of all children in the school. The General Subdivision had two administrative units, the Catalan Teaching Service and the Interculturality and Social Cohesion Service, designed to work together to promote the Plan for Language and Social Cohesion. A team to reinforce and assess in language, interculturality and social cohesion was created to apply these measures. This has led to the development of plans and projects for the reception and integration of all children (Garreta and Bochaca 2011).
The 2009 Education Law of Catalonia includes the right and obligation to know the official languages, which means that Catalan is the vehicular and teaching language in Catalonia. Thus, educational activities (both oral and written), materials, textbooks and evaluation activities in the areas, subjects and modules of the curriculum must normally be in Catalan, except the subjects of Castilian and foreign language and literature.
In 2011, the Department of Education was restructured. Thus, the department, in accordance with the principles and objectives established in the Education Law of Catalonia, and in line with the 2011 Framework agreement to fight against school failure and the Government of the Generalitat developed the Plan for the Reduction of School Failure (Departament d'Ensenyament 2013), which aimed to decrease failure at school in six years (2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016)(2017)(2018), with four main objectives: improving the skill level of pupils in primary education, increasing the levels of students in compulsory secondary education, increasing student academic performance in this stage and reducing the rate of premature school leaving.
This plan contains, among others, the following targets: attention to the diversity of pupils and the personalisation of teaching, multilingualism, the involvement and commitment of the family, relations between the educational community and the surroundings, and the reduction of absenteeism and premature school leaving.
Within these measures, we highlight those related to sociocultural diversity from the 2014-2015 academic year: • Educational Environment Plans with the co-responsibility of the municipal entities and different agents in the territory. These plans represent a pioneering experience in Europe. They seek to integrate an entire neighbourhood into a larger educational community around joint initiatives and plans where the number of immigrants exceeds 40% of the population. The most relevant difficulty is that such initiatives must guarantee the presence and attendance of the immigrant families, together with the native families, in these joint activities. • Training and orientation by the reinforcement teams for the schools and teaching staff in aspects of interculturality and social cohesion, together with assessment in language, interculturality and social cohesion. Catalonia is one of the communities working the hardest on teacher training in this regard. • Telematic lessons with material, resources and orientation for the reception of newly arrived students, their families, the didactics of Catalan as a second language, measures for learning, strategies of linguistic intervention, etc. • Projects addressing 17 themes on coexistence, grouped into three thematic axes: values and attitudes, conflict management and organisation of the school. These include goals for both inside and outside the classroom and the school. • Learning communities as a project based on a set of successful educational measures aimed at a social and educational transformation. • Pedagogical audits to help improve academic results.
• Introduction of an alternative to religion in primary education in the area of education in social and civic values, and community service as obligatory in the curriculum in the second cycle of compulsory secondary education. • Project for the promotion of the Romani people with the aim of reducing absenteeism and premature school leaving by Roma pupils, as well as to reinforce the visibility and values of Roma culture in the curriculum and the school. Regarding the high percentage of Roma pupils from Romania, the schools have started to a contract two new types of staff: one for linguistic translation and the other for education (basically, for the prevention and management of conflicts).
These measures are providing very positive outcomes because they are concrete and ambitious projects focused on specific aspects of the integration process of immigrant children.

Policy for integrating immigrant children in the autonomous community of Andalusia
Andalucía is the Spanish region with the fourth highest number of immigrants (the first is Madrid, and the second is Catalonia). It has a foreign population census of 657,815 people, including those from other EU countries, with the highest number of immigrants coming from Morocco (a total number of 125,258 people). In 2014, the third Integral Plan for Immigration in Andalusia 'Horizon 2016' was approved. This is an ambitious plan that takes into account a significant number of involved areas, and grants 800 million euros to the socioeducative area. There are still no results to assess these new lines of action, although they are showing outcomes in line with the above-mentioned plans.
The main initiatives contained in the second Integral Plan that have been developed and that still are being undertaken with regard to immigrant children are the following: • The process of schooling. The aim is to guarantee education for all children from immigrant families under the same conditions as local pupils at any time of year. To this end, measures have been enacted to aid in their transition, such as providing information for families and immigrant groups about the process of schooling and the organisation of the education system in Andalusia. • Attention to the educational needs of immigrant pupils. This refers to ensuring immigrant education by providing extra human and material resources to the schools with a significant number of immigrant pupils that require educational compensation measures to integrate them. Other measures that have been applied to a lesser extent include: a reduction of the teacher-pupil ratio, the organisation of groups for educational support and the signing of agreements with non-profit-making groups to train and use cultural mediators. • Support for schools to integrate the intercultural perspective and promote the processes of exchange, interaction and cooperation between cultures. The most generalised practice for this has been the authorisation of schools to organise intercultural activities aimed at all the sectors of a neighbourhood, town, libraries or education area where the school is located, as well as the lending of specific support to schools that have carried out their own intercultural projects and reception plans. • The commitment to language learning while promoting one's mother tongue.
Since 2007, efforts have been made to strengthen support programmes for teaching Spanish to immigrant users, as well as maintaining and evaluating the culture of origin of said pupils. In this sense, Temporary Language Adaptation Classrooms, both fixed and itinerant, are a pioneering initiative for integrating foreign children, and one that has been adopted by other autonomous communities (Palomino 2011

Discussion of the results
In the context studied, and despite decades of experience, specific immigration plans have not given rise to a more 'natural' integration into the structure of different national policies. Interdepartmental involvement is common, with responsibility and measures related to immigration spread across different departments. This integration finally takes shape in the above-mentioned specific strategic plans that combine different measures and biases that we have had occasion to analyse in this case study. The development of the framework of a plan allows the three regions to have 'official' support and a corresponding funding line. However, if there is inadequate monitoring, control and evaluation, it will be difficult to know whether these plans are useful to immigrants in particular, and society in general.
Within the framework of the publication of strategic plans, a key difference should be noted among the three autonomous communities. In the case of Catalonia, the specified measures are much more specific than in the other two regions. For example, Environment Education Plans (Planes Educativos del Entorno, PEE) are widespread and widely known across Catalonia (there is a great deal of public information). However, in the case of Andalusia, which has a very similar initiative to the Community Action Plans, these plans are practically unknown.
Among the measures themselves, we also find similarities, coincidences and notable differences. Among the common elements are: • plans for the reception and integration of immigrant children; • the development and promotion of intercultural education; • the creation of reception classes and adaptation workshops for the schools in Catalonia, which take the form of the classes in the Programme for Insertion into the Education System in the Madrid model or the support for language learning, through the Temporary Linguistic Adaptation Classes in the Andalusian context, since 2007; • the training offered to professionals in the schools most affected by immigration, as well as the existence of specialised assessments regarding intercultural practices. The numerical cataloguing of the school network marks the reality of the measures applied in the field of the communities, which is especially explicit in the case of Madrid. • The development and publication of guides to didactic resources and materials and their dissemination throughout the network.
All of the above are combined with different programmes and measures of reinforcement, such as accompanying pupils in primary and secondary schools, which is common to the three contexts. In many cases, this focus on the change in cycle and the move to professional training resembles what is done in Andalusia.
The links to the surroundings, understood in a broader sense, include the promotion of the Environment Education Plans mentioned in the Catalan case. These correspond to measures in Madrid related to educational mediators, who have been working since 2006 in schools in the Community of Madrid, complemented by the Translator and Interpreter Service or the Andalusian cultural mediators, backed by the Community Action Plans mentioned above. Intervention in the families is also a part of the measures common to all three models.
The richness of the Madrid model and its peculiarity stems mainly from the insistence on linking its proposals to the subjects of study, with the creation of specific compensatory measures. The linguistic project in Catalonia is drawn up and works transversally, and we also find a greater incidence of thematic and innovative initiatives in the pedagogical field with the inclusion of the learning communities or the management and prevention of conflicts through projects such as the promotion of the Roma people. The Catalan case also shows efforts to combine and link current concerns about educational evaluation to specific measures to prevent drop out, such as the second opportunity programmes for 16-18-year-olds. In Andalusia, there are also some distinctive traits in a model that aim to tackle the real situation of the immigrant population. These go beyond compulsory education measures. They contain provisions related to access to complementary services, such as housing services to enable students to continue studying beyond compulsory education. In this context, the programmes that combine the reinforcement of the acquisition of the vehicular language and the promotion of one's mother tongue are especially attractive.

Conclusions
Since the beginning of the economic crisis, there has been a notable increase in local measures and greater coordination in the design of policies and measures from each autonomous government for the groups at risk of social and cultural marginalisation.
We still need to evaluate what will come from the new Law for the Improvement of Quality in Education. We do not know if it will be an inclusive, participative, equitable and democratic educational model, or if it will be selective, competitive, meritocratic, exclusive and segregatory for those pupils who do not reach the standards of quality now conceived as 'excellence'.
In Europe, education has recently been incorporated as a priority in the New Community Strategy put into place in March 2011, which in our opinion is in part due to the efforts already begun by the three studied communities. However, the design of strategic plans will not be useful if they are not known and taken on board by the host society. Social awareness generated by public administrations, by means of the media and by social and civic organisations, is a key factor. However, it is necessary that such plans be designed with an open and flexible profile, specified in each territory at regional and local levels with the participation and intervention of the municipalities and those social sectors most directly involved. The only way to realise such plans and to guarantee that they are going to be useful is to ensure the existence of clear indicators for the evaluation of each measure in all three cases. This is not only a guarantee for the administration itself to assess the fulfilment and performance level of the changes, but also for society itself to know the level of compliance with the objectives and the effectiveness of the use of public resources.
Other aspects that deserve priority include the language issue, but with an approach not just centred on learning the language of the community. Regarding this subject, research tends to highlight the importance of paying attention to the pupils' mother tongue. For example, Vila (2004) notes that it is essential to develop the means for immigrants to maintain their own language, understanding that a mastery level in one's own language and an appreciation of this implies greater willingness and ability to learn a new language. To this end, it seems necessary to include and/ or reinforce programmes for learning the most common mother tongue languages of pupils in the schools as an extra activity. The aim of this is to facilitate pupils' knowledge and encourage positive attitudes towards cultural and linguistic diversity. In fact, further studies will be required to analyse in depth what is happening in all the communities, as well as what the changes in the new law mean for a highquality and equitable education and that will benefit all pupils.
Intercultural education still remains wishful thinking to a degree (Dietz and Mateos Cortés 2012). Undoubtedly, concrete measures must be integrated into laws and educational programmes. Additionally, the training curriculum of future teachers should consider both their skills and their suitability in attaining the complete integration of immigrants.
To summarise, it is suggested that it is desirable for the practice of intercultural education to advance specifically in the following areas (Suárez-Ortega, Ballesteros-Velázquez and Malik-Liévano 2012; Tupas 2014; Catarci and Fiorucci 2015): • The awareness of society in general and the educational community in particular of the importance of intercultural education. • The groupings and selection of the group of students and the teaching staff.
• The renewal of methodologies, the design of new activities and resources.
• The criteria and procedures for monitoring and evaluating people and plans.
• The pathways for involving parents and the rest of the educational community.
The supposed axis for each measure responds to a common requirement: a vehicular language. The same process of linguistic unification that was the basis for national education systems became an element, not so much as a guarantor of differentiation, but rather to generate a sense of belonging to the then nascent liberal nineteenth century nation states (De la Peña and Hernández 1998). There is a great deal of sense in the combination that the Generalitat highlights through its departments, namely language and social cohesion. Indeed, there is 'cohesion' through a common language; it is important and efforts should be devoted to it. Thus, at least for a moment, we can stop flying the flag of respect of differences and accept the final aim of working towards social cohesion.
Although this study only addresses 3 out of 17 communities in Spain, it has to be recognised that these three are exemplary communities with large numbers of immigrant students. They are also communities that have set up specific plans for integrating immigrant students. It is hoped that future research will explore educational intervention, the everyday praxis in the schools, the concerns and demands of the teachers and that it be used to consolidate a transcultural educational model that gradually abandons the restrictive visions of interculturality being restricted to minority students and fosters a concept of education that structures the life of all schools.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors. Note 1. In Spain, the Roma are typically considered to be one of the more representative and significant ethnic minorities. However, we define 'native' as those that are not immigrants, which includes the Roma minority in this study.