Research note: “Like taking a fish from the lake and putting it on the land”: How performance and grade placement affect migrant and refugee students in a public school in Nairobi, Kenya

ABSTRACT The United Nations (U.N.) advocates for the inclusion of refugees into public schools. This ethnographic, pilot research explores foreign students’ experience of inclusion and belonging in a Nairobi public school. The research found that these students most resented being placed in lower grades and that their lowered grade placement may have benefited the teachers and schools, to the detriment of foreign students. Lowered grade placement was justified as a way to mitigate students’ negative impact on school performance [mean grades] - however, foreign, over-aged students soon became the schools’ overachievers: given leadership opportunities and getting the highest grades, with some younger Kenyans classmates feeling unable to compete. According to this research, a focus on performance may turn foreign students into a school’s ‘joker’ card: slotted into lower grades when they would harm class performance and left as overaged students when they increase performance, a phenomenon which not only harms all students but further divides host communities and foreign students.