Trauma may help explain why immigrant children fall behind in school

Sanni Aalto

Finland is often celebrated for having one of the best education systems in the world. But behind the headlines, not every child is benefiting equally. Studies show that children from immigrant and refugee backgrounds face an achievement gap compared to their native peers (Dunlavy et al., 2020).

According to the latest PISA 2022 results, many first-generation immigrant students in Finland fall behind in math and reading skills compared to native peers (Pulkkinen et al., 2024). These learning gaps can have long-term effects, limiting children’s chances to participate fully in society and to access future education and employment.

Looking beyond language and income: What else affects school success?

Socio-economic disadvantage and lack of sufficient language skills have often been proposed as some of the main reasons for why immigrant children struggle to reach the same achievement level as the natives. While these are important factors, they don’t explain everything. What else might be shaping the learning outcomes?

The RefSupport project set out to explore this question. Specifically, we wanted to understand whether the stressful or even traumatic experiences that many immigrant and refugee children encounter before and after migration could play a role in their cognitive performance and ability to succeed at school.

Migration affects more than just where a child lives

For children from immigrant and refugee backgrounds, migration is rarely just about moving from one country to another. It often involves adapting to an unfamiliar culture and language, navigating new school systems, and building new friendships and social networks.

Refugee children may also carry the burden of deeply distressing experiences, such as war, forced displacement, or the loss of loved ones in the home country, or experience discrimination after migration. Coping with such stressors requires a lot of psychological resources that might otherwise be used for learning and acquiring of age-appropriate skills.

Immigrant children often experience more severe trauma symptoms than their native peers — symptoms that can directly affect working memory, concentration, and learning outcomes. Supporting mental wellbeing may therefore be one of the most effective ways to close the achievement gap.

Stress and trauma affect children on multiple levels. They are linked not only to mental health difficulties but also to cognitive and social development.

Studies show that the more stress or trauma a child is exposed to, the higher the likelihood of developing mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Trauma can also influence brain development, disrupting key functions needed for learning, such as memory, executive functioning, and general intelligence (Malarbi et al., 2017).

Moreover, trauma can alter brain regions involved in social processing, leading to difficulties or biases in understanding the feelings of others (Couette et al., 2020). In short, trauma doesn’t just affect feelings, it can shape how a child learns and interacts with others.

Rethinking how we assess and support students

But how to reliably assess learning and development among children from many different countries and cultural backgrounds? Standard psychological assessment tools are often culturally and linguistically dependent, which means they may not accurately capture the abilities or difficulties of children from immigrant backgrounds, especially if they come from a non-western culture.

This often creates delays in identifying learning barriers and, importantly, in providing timely support for these children.

The RefSupport project seeks to address these challenges by using a screening battery with psychological assessment tools that rely less on cultural understanding. 

The RefSupport project develops culturally sensitive screening and feedback tools to help teachers understand students’ real strengths, needs, and mental wellbeing — so every child gets the support they deserve.

It is available online and in nine different languages. This screening battery is designed to offer a fuller picture of students’ cognitive and social skills and mental health.

The screening battery is coupled with a feedback tool to provide teachers and schools’ welfare personnel with information on the students’ skills and wellbeing. This feedback can then be used to better understand what kind of support the students need to thrive in school and beyond.

Early findings: Could mental health be blocking learning?

Our first results from 101 students in grades 4 to 6 in Turku, including students from both reception classes for newly arrived immigrant students and mainstream education classes, show interesting findings.

Although both immigrant and native students report approximately the same amount of traumatic experiences, the nature of immigrant students’ traumatic experiences may be different from those of the natives: the immigrant children’s trauma symptoms were more severe than the native students’.

While the native students reported moderate trauma related stress, the migrant students’ symptoms came close to clinically relevant PTSD symptoms.

The initial results also point to an important link between mental health and working memory. Among immigrant students, traumatic experiences and trauma symptoms were associated with weaker working memory performance and this negative association appeared stronger and more consistent than among native students.

The same was found with depressive symptoms and working memory; elevated depressive symptoms were associated with weaker performance in working memory and, again, the association was more consistent among immigrant students compared to the natives.

What this means for learning — and where we go next

Working memory plays a key role in everyday learning, from solving math problems to following classroom instructions. If depression and trauma negatively impact working memory, children may find it harder to keep up with age-appropriate schoolwork, potentially contributing to the achievement gap observed between immigrant and native students.

Thereby supporting children’s mental wellbeing may be a key factor in supporting their educational achievement. Also, trauma-related stress was alarmingly common in classrooms with almost 70% of children having experienced at least one traumatic event and almost 60% of them reporting at least moderate level of trauma symptoms.

Therefore, trauma-informed classroom practices could benefit the wellbeing and learning of all students.

While these findings point to important reasons that may lie behind the achievement gap, we still need more data to fully understand how trauma may affect also other factors in learning, children’s social skills, and overall wellbeing.

That’s why we’re continuing to collect data this school year. Our ultimate goal is to give teachers and school staff better tools to spot challenges early, offer the right kind of support, and recognize the unique strengths each child brings to the classroom.

Author

Sanni Aalto is a Doctoral Researcher studying how trauma and mental health affect learning among immigrant and refugee children. Through the RefSupport project, she explores new ways to assess cognitive skills and wellbeing beyond cultural and language barriers. Her goal is to help schools identify learning challenges early and build trauma-informed classroom practices that support every child’s potential.

References:

Couette, M., Mouchabac, S., Bourla, A., Nuss, P., & Ferreri, F. (2020). Social cognition in post-traumatic stress disorder: A systematic review. British Journal of Clinical Psychology, 59(2), 117–138.

Dunlavy, A., de Montgomery, C. J., Lorentzen, T., Malin, M., & Hjern, A. (2020). Equity in Education? A comparative analysis of educational outcomes among refigee children in the Nordic countries (CAGE PROJECT REPORT 1). NordForsk.

Malarbi, S., Abu-Rayya, H. M., Muscara, F., & Stargatt, R. (2017). Neuropsychological functioning of childhood trauma and post-traumatic stress disorder: A meta-analysis. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 72, 68–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.11.004

Pulkkinen, J., Kauppinen, H., Hiltunen, J., Lehtola, P., Nissinen, K., & Rautopuro, J. (2024). Tukea tasa-arvoiselle koulutielle: Maahanmuuttajataustaisten nuorten osaaminen PISA 2022 -tutkimuksessa. Koulutuksen tutkimuslaitos: Tutkimuksia, 1–116. https://doi.org/10.17011/ktl-t/39