Immigrant Status and Home Language Background : Implications for Australian Student Performance in PISA 2000

The primary focus of this report is to examine the effect that immigrant status and home language background may have on the performance of Australian students who participated in the OECD/Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA 2000). Approximately 5477 students from 231 schools across Australia participated in the study. In this report, two sets of analyses were conducted. The first set focuses on immigrant status of students and the second set of analyses provides data on those students who speak a language other than English at home compared to students from an English home language background.