Supporting refugee integration in schools: Evidence from a randomized targeted intervention

The purpose of the project is to evaluate the Swedish National Agency for Education’s (Skolverket) targeted support program aimed at improving teaching quality for newly arrived students and for students with a mother tongue other than Swedish. The program was initiated in 2016 in response to the refugee crisis and targeted municipalities with a large inflow migrant students. The program is customized to the needs of each municipality during an initial phase during which a local team assisted by facilitators from Skolverket analyse the municipalities needs and challenges. The support packages include various forms of professional development and organizational support.

The project examines the effects of these interventions on educational outcomes for newly arrived students as well as for students with Swedish and foreign backgrounds. We also study effect the schools by analyzing impacts on classroom organization and on the allocation of different types of teaching resources.

The evaluation exploits the fact that the targeted interventions during 2016–2019 were rolled out in seven waves, where  municipalities ranked according to their need for support were pairwise randomly assigned to either treatment or control groups, following a design developed by IFAU.