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Study also reveals link between educational achievement and the age at which a child learns English or French
Immigrant children arriving in Canada after the age of nine are more likely to drop out of high school than those arriving at a younger age says new study.
According to the study led by Ottawa University Professor Miles Corak, children who came to Canada before the age of nine do well in school, often performing better than their natural-born Canadian classmates.
“The chances of not graduating from high school are about 15 per cent for boys and 11 per cent for girls who arrive in Canada before the age of nine, which is lower than the overall Canadian dropout rate of 19 per cent and 14 per cent for comparable groups of boys and girls,” says Prof. Corak.
“But the chances of immigrants not attaining a high school diploma increases progressively after that age, rising by more than one percentage point for each subsequent year. For those arriving in the country at age 15, the chances are about 22 per cent, greater than one in five.”
Prof. Corak's team noted however that children from English- or French-speaking countries did not face the same challenges at older ages, In fact, for those arriving from English- or French-speaking countries, the age of arrival has no discernible impact on high-school graduation rates.
Aside from early language acquisition, other factors that cause immigrant children over age nine to drop out include puberty and the challenges of adjusting to a new school system.
The age of nine is an important turning point in the development of children's cognitive capacities as they make the transition from “learning to read” to “reading to learn,” adds Prof. Corak, illustrating the challenges of language acquisition and educational integration, particularly for older children.
The study looked at the census data of more than 100,000 new Canadians who immigrated before the age of 18.
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