School Performance and cultural diversity: the linguistic axis

This work is aimed at determining which personal variables, theoretically related to school performance, may discriminate between natives and immigrant students who pass or fail the subjects of Spanish Language and Literature and Galician Language and Literature. To this end, using a sample of 465 native students and 275 Latin American students in Secondary Education we have carried out a transversal study employing as main tools a scale for students and a protocol for teachers. With the collected data we have conducted a stepwise inclusion discriminant analysis with the Mahalanobis Distance method. We have found significant differences in students' performance according to their origin and the language subject under study (Spanish Language and Literature and Galician Language and Literature). The difference that arises mostly between the two subgroups of students who fail and pass both subjects is established according to the classroom-level factors for those who pass and according to the student-level factors for those who fail, with special emphasis on the factors related to age and study habits.