The 2006 PISA study on educational achievements of 15-year-olds in Germany was coordinated by the OECD and documented highly diverging educational attainments of children with or without a migratory background. Factors influencing the educational attainment are the migration experience, the language acquisition, but also the social background and the individual and institutional discrimination of the students.

Quantitative surveys clearly illustrate the differences between students with or without a migratory background. Further information can be found here.

On the basis of assumed knowledge and language deficits, but also due to a supposedly neutral grading of teachers, the transition from elementary to secondary schools leads to unequal treatment, even though students with and without a migratory background perform equally well. This can be explained by individual misjudgments of respective teachers, but also by institutional discrimination. Forms of unequal treatment in school have so far only been systematically investigated to a very limited extent and therefore they have been hardly dealt with.