Introduction

In Australia, the most important thing is education. -Akok Footnote 1 (15-year-old male from Sudan, wave 1)

Being able to attend school and achieve educational success is one of the most highly valued opportunities for resettled refugee young people. It is also an important settlement goal that parents have for their children (Harris and Marlowe 2011). Education is a key facilitator of settlement among young people with refugee backgrounds and an important indicator of successful integration outcomes (Strang and Ager 2010). Further, schools are one of the first and most important institutions in which young people participate during settlement (Kia-Keating and Ellis 2007; Trickett and Birman 2005). Schools are central to promoting social and emotional development and supporting youth to successfully grapple with the challenges of settlement in the early years (Hek 2005). They are key sites for facilitating a sense of belonging and the transition to citizenship in the new country (Cassity and Gow 2005; Taylor and Sidhu 2012). Adjusting to school and developing a sense of belonging to their school community is considered central to the overall settlement experience of refugee young people (Kia-Keating and Ellis 2007). However, engagement with the school system can be challenging, particularly for those who have experienced disrupted education prior to arrival and who are negotiating inter-cultural challenges in school settings (Kia-Keating and Ellis 2007).

Despite the value and significance of education for young people’s futures, a significant body of research has identified the substantial barriers to educational success among resettled refugee youth both in Australia (Victorian Settlement Planning Committee 2008; Beadle 2014; CMY 2013; Ferfolja and Vickers 2010; Matthews 2008; Block et al. 2014; McCarthy and Vickers 2012) and internationally (He et al. 2015; Hek 2005; McBrien 2005; Wilkinson 2002; Dryden-Peterson 2015). The identified barriers include arriving with little or no previous schooling, not speaking the language of the resettlement country, low levels of literacy in spoken language(s), lack of familiarity with education systems, racism and discrimination, family responsibilities and the social and economic challenges of making a home in a new country (Cassity and Gow 2005; Ferfolja and Vickers 2010; Harris and Marlowe 2011; Hek 2005; Kanu 2008; Matthews 2008; Olliff and Couch 2005). Further, traumatic experiences prior to resettlement—including violence, forced displacement, disrupted social relationships and separation from family—can have an adverse impact on learning capacity (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development 2004; Hek 2005; Dryden-Peterson 2015; Due et al. 2015).

Despite this large body of research, studies have been cross-sectional, a large majority have used qualitative methods and many have reported information and insights of youth and professionals working in the field as derived from consultative approaches. Only two previous studies have identified the predictors of educational outcomes among this population group using quantitative methods (Trickett and Birman 2005; Wilkinson 2002). No studies to date have employed a quantitative approach using longitudinal data collection or applied this approach within the Australian context. As Kaplan et al. (2015: 2) argue, ‘there is a major need for longitudinal research on refugee children’s learning and academic performance’. In this paper, we address these gaps. Based on longitudinal data, we report on the predictors of secondary school completion among a cohort of 47 refugee youth 8 to 9 years after their resettlement in Melbourne, Australia.

Young People with Refugee Backgrounds in Australia

In Australia, close to one quarter of the annual intake of humanitarian migrants is made up of young people aged 10 to 19 years (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2014). Australia funds a programme of Humanitarian Settlement Services that provides intensive support on arrival and throughout the early settlement period (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2015), with specific policies and programmes that target youth particularly in the education and training sectors (CMY 2011). Part of this intensive support includes the opportunity to attend an English Language School (ELS) for 12 months. Over 70 % of secondary-school age refugee background youth enter education through this intensive English language programme (Department of Education and Early Childhood Development 2011; Hatoss et al. 2012). As a result, ELSs are often the first point of orientation for newly arrived refugee youth and, as such, play a key role in providing support and linking them to the social life and resources of the broader host society. Following ELS, students transit into a mainstream educational institution. On entering mainstream school, most are placed in age-appropriate year levels despite substantial gaps in educational history resulting in significant difficulties in attaining satisfactory levels of achievement.

Methods

Research Design

The findings in this paper are drawn from the Good Starts Study for Refugee Youth, a longitudinal study of settlement and wellbeing over the first 8 to 9 years in Melbourne, Australia (Gifford et al. 2009). The study was conducted between 2004 and 2013 and aimed to identify the psychosocial factors that assist resettled refugee background youth in making a good start in their new country and to describe in depth the contexts, settings and social processes that support, enhance and facilitate settlement and wellbeing.

The overall study used a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods with data collected through a series of sessions carried out in school, family and community settings (Gifford et al. 2007; Gifford et al. 2009). Participants were recruited within their first 6 months in Australia, and data were collected through a settlement journal in which they recorded their experiences through drawings, photos and answering questions. A structured questionnaire gathered data on socio-demographic characteristics and indicators of settlement and wellbeing, including education (Gifford et al. 2007; Gifford et al. 2009). Open-ended, semi-structured interviews and group discussions were also conducted each year with subsamples (Gifford et al. 2009; McMichael et al. 2015; Gifford 2013). Data collection was facilitated by research assistants and interpreters/bicultural workers. Researchers kept extensive field notes.

Recruitment and Sampling

About one third of all humanitarian arrivals are resettled in the state of Victoria each year. Of these, about 1000 are young people aged between 10 to 19 years (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2014). The study aimed to recruit about 10 % of these youth within the first 6 months of their arrival in Australia. As most newly arrived refugee youth spend their first year in an ELS, recruitment through these specialist schools was deemed the most viable sampling strategy. In Victoria, ELSs include all migrant students who do not speak English, some of whom are refugee-background students. The study identified those ELSs in the Melbourne metropolitan area with high numbers of students with refugee backgrounds and engaged three of these schools in the study. Each school selected classes to participate in the study that comprised of refugee-background students aged 12 to 18 years.

The ELSs sent information about the study to parents, invited parents to attend a briefing session at the school (run by the study team) and solicited the written consent of parents/guardians for their children to participate. Ethical clearance was provided by La Trobe University Human Ethics Committee, the Institutional Ethics Committee of the Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture (a partner of the study) and the Victorian Department of Education.

A total of 120 refugee background students were initially recruited into the study. Participants were followed up annually for 4 years and then 8 to 9 years after their first interview. Fifty one young people completed the wave 5 (year 8/9) follow-up. Of these, four (two females and two males) had a child during the study period and dropped out of school. As it was clear from the qualitative data that this was their main reason for not completing their secondary education, these four participants have been excluded from the current analysis. Thus, data from 47 students have been used to assess the predictors of secondary school completion.

Measures

In order to construct a model of the most likely predictors of secondary school completion over time, we reviewed the literature published between 1976 and 2015 to identify the barriers and facilitators of educational attainment among resettled refugee youth. All published papers were either cross-sectional or were comprised of consultations with refugee youth and service providers in the settlement and education sectors. Most of the studies were qualitative, and none were longitudinal. In reviewing this literature, we categorised predictors into three broad classes: socio-demographic factors, individual factors and community/structural factors (Hek 2005; Cassity and Gow 2005; Hatoss et al. 2012; Kanu 2008; McBrien 2005; Rana et al. 2011; Trickett and Birman 2005; Wilkinson 2002). Educational outcome was completion (or not) of secondary school (the Victorian Certificate of Education)Footnote 2 or equivalent (the Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning).Footnote 3 The model of predictors of secondary school completion is presented in Fig. 1. Table 1 shows the dependent and independent variables used in this analysis.

Fig. 1
figure 1

Conceptual model of predictors of secondary school completion among refugee background youth

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Table 1 Measures used to predict refugee youth’s secondary school completion over their first 8–9 years of settlement in Australia
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Statistical Analysis

Data were analysed using Stata 13.1 (StataCorp 2013). Chi-square tests (or Fisher’s exact test when low cell counts) for categorical variables and non-parametric Mann-Whitney test for continuous variables were used to estimate differences in socio-demographic (at wave 1), individual and community/structural factors between males and females (n = 47). Firth logistic regression (Firth 1993) was used to assess the association of the educational outcome variable with the range of factors identified in the model. The advantage of the Firth method is that ‘it provides bias-reduction for small sample size as well as yields finite and consistent estimates even in case of separation’ (Wang 2014) (p. 1). Separation occurs ‘if the responses and non-responses can be perfectly separated by a single factor or by a non-trivial linear combination of risk factors’ (Heinze and Schemper 2002) (p. 2409). Those factors with a p value >0.2 were sequentially deleted using a backwards elimination procedure (Agresti and Finlay 2014). The R 2 statistic (using Tjur’s procedure) was used to estimate overall model fit (Tjur 2009).

Results

Participant Characteristics

A comparison of socio-demographic (at wave 1), individual and community/structural factors between 24 males (51 %) and 23 females (49 %) is shown in Table 2. Participants were born in five different countries with 62 % born in Africa (Sudan and Ethiopia), 34 % in the Middle East (Iraq and Afghanistan) and 4 % in Eastern Europe (Croatia). Females reported significantly lower levels of previous schooling (p = 0.044) and were also less likely to perceive that they spoke English well at wave 3 (p = 0.050; borderline) than males. No other significant differences were found between males and females. Eight years after arriving in Australia, participants’ mean age was 22.7 years (SD = 1.8; range = 18 to 26).

Table 2 Descriptive statistics of socio-demographic, individual and community/structural factors by sex
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Predictors of Secondary School Completion

Of the 47 participants, 29 (62 %) reported they had graduated from secondary school (or equivalent) since arriving in Australia and 18 (38 %) reported that they had not completed secondary school. Females were more likely to have completed secondary education than males (74 versus 50 %), but this difference was not statistically significant (p = 0.092). The final regression model for predictors of secondary school completion (after backwards elimination of those factors in the model with p > 0.2) is presented in Table 3.

Table 3 Final regression model of predictors of secondary school completion among refugee background youth during their first 8–9 years of resettlement in Melbourne, Australia
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Age on arrival and experiences of discrimination in Australia were significant predictors of school completion after controlling for participants’ sex. For each year increase in age on arrival in Australia, the odds of completing secondary school decreased by 0.494 [95 % CI (0.291, 0.841); p = 0.009]. In other words, for each year decrease in age on arrival, youth were approximately two times more likely to complete secondary school. Those who experienced discrimination in Australia were 0.205 times less likely to complete secondary education [95 % CI (0.043, 0.991); p = 0.049]. That is, young people who did not experience discrimination while living in Australia were on average 4.9 times more likely to complete secondary school than those who did experience discrimination. The model presented in Table 3 predicted 31.6 % of the variance of secondary school completion. All other variables in the conceptual model shown in Fig. 1 (e.g. region of birth, previous schooling, time in Australia, English language proficiency, school satisfaction, self-esteem, supportive environment, subjective social status, ethnic identity, moving house) were not significant and therefore were gradually eliminated from the final analytical model.

Discussion

Overall, this study found that, 8 to 9 years after arriving in Australia, 62 % of the 47 refugee background young people had completed secondary school (or equivalent). This rate of completion is lower than the national average; in Australia, 74 % of young people complete secondary education or equivalent by age 19 (Lamb et al. 2015) (the mean age of our participants at year 8 was 22.7 years). In Canada, a cross-sectional study of 91 refugee background youth aged 15–21 years (Wilkinson 2002) reported that 53 % were ‘on track’ with their education (i.e. had already completed secondary school and entered further education, or were currently enrolled in high school at an appropriate year level for their age), 27 % were likely to complete high school but were unlikely to engage in post-secondary education and the remaining 20 % were ‘behind/dropped out’ (i.e. in school at an inappropriate grade for their age or had exited the education system). In the USA, Rana et al. (2011) interviewed 19 unaccompanied Sudanese refugee background youth aged 18–26 years living with foster carers and found that 100 % had completed secondary school within their first 7 years in the country. Rana and colleagues further reported that 86 % of 49 unaccompanied minors living with 15 foster families had completed their high school education. Although these results were from a small, selective sample, it shows the possibility for educational success among resettled youth with appropriate supports, expectations and opportunities (Rana et al. 2011).

After assessing a number of potential determinants of secondary school completion (shown in Fig. 1), this study found that age on arrival and experiences of discrimination were significant predictors of completion among this group of refugee background youth living in Australia. The older the young person on arrival in Australia, the less likely they were to complete secondary school. This is contrary to Wilkinson’s study among refugee background youth resettled in Canada (Wilkinson 2002) which found that age had non-significant effect on their educational status. In the USA, Trickett and Birman (2005) studied the school adaptation of 110 refugee adolescents from the former Soviet Union and found no significant effects of age on grade point average (GPA), disciplinary infractions or school belonging. Upon arrival in Australia, most school-aged children attend an English Language School for up to 12 months and then transition into a mainstream school where they are placed in classes to match their chronological age rather than their actual level of prior educational achievement (Refugee Council of Australia 2011). Our findings suggest that this education policy may present challenges to older school-aged refugee background youth who might find it difficult to transition between the refugee journey (including life in protracted refugee situations) and a formal school environment in Australia. Older school-aged youth are entering secondary school at higher year levels with significant educational expectations and workload. It could also be argued that older refugee youth face greater ‘pressure to enter employment and earn money to support themselves (…) or to assist their family rather than finish school’ (Refugee Council of Australia 2011: 1). While our study did not find prior education to be a predictor of education outcome, appropriate grade placement was a key determinant of academic success among refugee youth resettled in Canada (Wilkinson 2002). Qualitative data also reinforce the significance of placement in an appropriate level of education relative to educational history in our cohort (Nunn et al. 2014).

Importantly, this study found that refugee background youth who experienced discrimination while living in Australia were significantly less likely to complete secondary school compared to those who did not experience discrimination. In the Canadian study, Wilkinson (2002) did not measure experiences of discrimination but found that ethnicity had the strongest influence on educational status, with youth from the former Yugoslavia more likely to be ‘on-track’ than those from other countries (i.e. El Salvador, Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Vietnam, Somalia, Guatemala and Pakistan). Using mainstream absorption theory (Feagin and Booher Feagin 1998), Wilkinson suggested that ‘since the cultural practices and ethnic background of most former Yugoslavian youth are similar to that of mainstream (white) Canadians, we would expect to find them doing better in school’ than those from different cultures and races, and that this may ‘reflect institutional racism, systematic discrimination, and the less subtle and more personal forms of racism including polite racism and subliminal racism’ (Wilkinson 2002: 186).

Contrary to our findings, the study of refugee adolescents from the former Soviet Union resettled in the USA (Trickett and Birman 2005) reported that perceived discrimination was not significantly associated to school outcomes (GPA, disciplinary infractions and school belonging). While Trickett and Birman’s sample included students from Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova, with 88 % self-identifying as Jewish, our study consisted mostly of refugee background youth from visible minorities from Africa and the Middle East. A review of the literature on the needs and obstacles to education for refugee youth in the USA (McBrien 2005) reported common discriminatory practices among teachers and peers towards students from visible minorities such as Latin Americans, Hmongs and Somalis. These practices increased students’ isolation and had an adverse impact on their academic goals and career aspirations (Birman et al. 2001). In Australia, greater experiences of racism have been found to be significantly associated with lower level maths and English among Indigenous Australian students and Asian/Eastern students (Bodkin-Andrews and Craven 2014). Research with young people has shown that the majority of racism and discrimination experiences occur at school and that students from migrant and refugee backgrounds are the main recipients (Mansouri et al. 2009). Furthermore, ‘racism has a negative impact upon the settlement and transition of young migrants and refugees, affecting self-esteem, self-confidence, and belonging to the broader community’ (CMY 2014: 3). A qualitative study of the Australian high school experiences among 12 refugee background youth aged 16–19 years from Southeast Asia and Africa found that many ‘had to face being identified as embodying difference, and embodying it in a way that was not acceptable to their peers’ which had a negative impact on their sense of belonging within the school culture (Uptin et al. 2013: 129). Importantly, we have previously reported that experiences of discrimination had a negative impact on both subjective health status and wellbeing among this cohort of refugee background youth 3 (Correa-Velez et al. 2010) and 8 years (Correa-Velez et al. 2015) after resettlement.

Of the other factors tested in our model, it was notable that sex and English language competency did not have a significant impact on school completion. Sex is often reported as a key factor influencing education among refugee youth, with concerns that gendered cultural expectations result in girls experiencing greater barriers to education than boys (Akua-Sakyiwah 2015; Hatoss et al. 2012; Rana et al. 2011; Watkins et al. 2012). In the USA, Trickett and Birman (2005) found females achieved a higher GPA and were less likely to incur disciplinary infractions than their male counterparts. However, sex was not found to be a predictive variable of education status among refugee youth in Canada (Wilkinson 2002).

Similar to our results, Wilkinson (2002) and Trickett and Birman (2005) found that English language competence was not a predictor of school outcomes. Those authors suggested that, as all their participants had previously completed specialist English language schooling, they likely had an adequate level of English literacy to succeed in their education. Our cohort had also undertaken 6–12 months of specialist English language schooling on arrival in Australia and only 9 % self-rated their English language proficiency as low at the wave 3 data collection.

Having a child has previously been identified as a significant factor that shapes education outcomes among refugee-background young people in Australia (Hatoss et al. 2012; Nunn et al. 2014; McMichael 2013) and the USA (Rana et al. 2011). For this analysis, we purposefully excluded the four participants (two females and two males) who had a child during the study period because these young people clearly indicated this to be the reason for dropping out of school. Having a baby creates a seemingly insurmountable impediment to completing secondary school, and not just for young mothers. Many young fathers also find they have to put their education on hold due to caring duties and/or financial responsibilities (Rana et al. 2011). While unexpected pregnancies among newly arrived refugee youth are not necessarily unwelcome (McMichael 2013), the arrival of a baby requires new parents to prioritise parenting responsibilities over their education. Many young refugees, however, maintain aspirations to achieve an education and seek out alternative pathways that balance the financial and caring responsibilities with their educational aspirations (Nunn et al. 2014).

Limitations

There are several limitations to this study that need to be acknowledged. First, the sample is small. The 47 participants were part of a longitudinal mixed-method study of 120 refugee background youth who resettled in Australia between 2003 and 2005. Because of the loss to follow up, a common issue in longitudinal studies, we do not know whether those participants who could not be contacted for the last interview had better or worse educational outcomes. The 47 participants were broadly representative of the original cohort in terms of sex, region of birth and years of schooling prior to resettlement (McMichael et al. 2015). Despite the small sample size, this is a unique study that has followed this group of young people over their first 8 to 9 years in Australia. To reduce small sample size bias and potential issues of data separation, the Firth logistic regression approach was used (Firth 1993). The strengths and advantages of this approach have been clearly demonstrated (Heinze and Schemper 2002). Second, the sample was not randomly selected and therefore may not be representative of the overall refugee youth population recently resettled in Australia. Except for a slight over-representation of South Sudanese youth, the original cohort of 120 participants closely resembled the population of refugee youth arriving in Australia between 2003 and 2006 in terms of country of birth and sex (Department of Immigration and Citizenship 2014). Third, this was an observational study with no comparison group. Future research should investigate whether the educational experiences of these youth are different to those of other minority or disadvantaged groups and/or to other recently arrived non-refugee migrant youth in Australia. Notably, the secondary school completion rate among our cohort (62 %) is similar to the 60 % completion rate (by age 19) among young people from the lowest socio-economic backgrounds in Australia (Lamb et al. 2015). Fourth, although subjective health status was included in the analysis as a potential predictor of secondary school completion, pre-migration trauma was not assessed in this study.

Despite these limitations, this longitudinal study makes an important contribution to the field of refugee youth education by testing the individual and structural predictors of secondary school completion via a reliable quantitative approach. Unlike cross-sectional research, longitudinal studies are able to approach settlement as a dynamic sequence of challenges and adaptive responses (Beiser 2009) and this is particularly important when it comes to the project of education among refugee background youth.

Conclusions

It is well established that not completing secondary school and not achieving well in school are predictors of later socio-economic outcomes (Circelli and Oliver 2012; Lamb et al. 2015). For resettled refugee background youth, school plays a key role in establishing meaningful connections, developing a sense of belonging to their new country and enabling transitions to citizenship (Uptin et al. 2013; Taylor and Sidhu 2012; Cassity and Gow 2005). However, as many arrive in the new country after experiencing violence and disrupted schooling, their experiences in educational contexts are often challenging. Our findings from this longitudinal research reveal that older age on arrival and experiences of discrimination while in Australia are significant barriers to secondary school completion. These findings highlight the need for more comprehensive and flexible approaches to secondary schooling for those refugee background youth who are placed in grades at school based on their age rather than their level of capability. Additional intensive support programmes for those older school age youth are required in order to facilitate their transition from an English Language School to mainstream schools. Support programmes may include bridging courses in numeracy and literacy, homework clubs, study groups and mentoring programmes (Multicultural Youth Affairs Network 2012).

Importantly, these findings also highlight the imperative of addressing racism and discrimination in educational settings and in the broader community. As stated by Taylor and Sidhu (2012: 52) ‘if we consider the experiences of refugees accepted for resettlement in countries like Australia, the protection of positive freedoms – specifically social, economic and cultural rights – is less evident. Refugees face attitudinal barriers and racism, which militate against good settlement outcomes’. Refugee youth enter Australia with high hopes and optimism for their futures, having endured the deprivations and violence of persecution and forced migration. Attending school and obtaining an education is one of their principal goals: they have so much to gain after a life of educational disadvantage. Every opportunity should be afforded to these youth to fulfil their desire to invest in their future through primary and secondary education. At a time when public political rhetoric is increasingly dehumanising those who are forcibly displaced (Hattam and Every 2010), the education and integration of refugee background youth is not only the responsibility of governments and schools but a project that involves all citizens.