Providing Quality Education For Newcomers - Challenges And Dimensions Of Solutions

Abstract

Latvia has welcomed war refugees from Ukraine with special understanding, and today's challenge is to provide them with quality education at all levels. Early preventive support systems and early intervention services provide full opportunities for the emotional, cognitive, mental and social development and well-being of newcomers. The most important factor for the inclusion of newcomers in education is a teacher who helps them to integrate successfully into their new environment and ensure stability and continuity in their development. This points to the need for competence development for teachers, improving skills to deal with the challenges of diversity, as it may exist in a classroom due to differences in intellectual abilities or learning disorders, interpersonal or social skills, beliefs and languages. 

The study on the inclusion of newcomers in education has been conducted within the State Research Programme Project "Towards sustainable development and inclusive society in Latvia: response to demographic and migration challenges" (No. VPP-IZM-2018/1-0015). 

The aim of the paper is to provide a comparative perspective of teachers' readiness to work with newcomers at different levels of education, offering solutions for their inclusion in the Latvian education system.