MOVING from one country to another is never easy, but Britain offers some unique challenges. “What the hell is black pudding?” asks Anna, a 15-year-old at Thomas Clarkson Academy. “It’s disgusting.” Complaints about food aside, newcomers at the school in Cambridgeshire are happy to be there. Nearly a third of pupils speak a foreign language at home, often Lithuanian or Polish. Their parents work in local factories and fields, but the children hope for better. One plans to study architecture at a good university. Another speaks joyfully of how her peers are open to those of all races and sexualities.

When the European Union absorbed eight countries from central and eastern Europe in 2004, their citizens gained the right to live and work in Britain. Three years later, Bulgarians and Romanians joined the club, although restrictions on their ability to work were lifted only in 2014. Britain is now home to about 1.8m people from these ten countries; in 2015 Poles overtook Indians as the single largest migrant group.

Brexit is likely to reduce future migration from these countries. Nevertheless, many immigrants have already put down roots—and their children are beginning to finish school. No publicly available data compare results by country of birth, but some divide pupils by their first language. So far, it seems that children from central and eastern Europe have found the transition difficult. Whereas 71% of pupils who chat in Gujarati at home get five good grades at GCSE, the exams taken by 16-year-olds, just 30% of those who talk in Latvian meet the standard. All of those from central and eastern Europe lag behind the average for England (see chart).

Although foreign-language speakers do worse than their Anglophone peers in the early years of school, by the age of 16 the gap has all but disappeared. Since lots of eastern Europeans arrive in Britain midway through their education, they have less time to catch up. And, as many European countries start school at an older age, some younger children have to adjust not only to a new education system, but also simply to being in a classroom, notes Bethan Rees of Cambridgeshire Council. Poverty makes things harder. Parents who work every available shift have little energy to chase after work-shy children. Some 68% of Lithuanian-speaking children and 63% of Polish-speakers live in poor areas, where schools tend to be worse. They have settled across the country, following work rather than existing communities, so many end up in areas with little experience of immigration. As Elzbieta Kardynal, a Polish educationalist, says: “If schools don’t have the knowledge and capacity, these children are put in the lowest sets…with all the naughty kids.” When GCSE results are adjusted for factors such as the uptake of free school meals (a proxy for poverty), geography and date of arrival, Polish pupils outperform white Britons, according to Steve Strand of Oxford University. Yet, even accounting for these factors, children from other countries are still behind: Romanians, Lithuanians and Latvians by the equivalent of three GCSE grades; Slovaks by ten. The difference may be partly cultural. The first wave of Polish pupils had a reputation for being particularly diligent. One head teacher says that, in her experience, Lithuanians are more likely than others to do paid work alongside their studies—partly because they are poorer and partly because their parents tend to place less emphasis on education. The problem is biggest among the Roma population. Having escaped terrible prejudice, many are reluctant to come into contact with local authorities. Some parents are unwilling to send their children—particularly girls—to secondary school to mix with non-Roma.

The rapid increase in the number of migrant children may also have caused difficulties. A report by academics at Middlesex University in 2008 noted that, in some schools, the number of Polish children rose from zero to dozens in a few years. The reaction was often one of “panic”, it says. Since then, schools have got better at testing the abilities of newcomers and hired more language specialists.

Some parents may have been too cautious to demand better. Many were schooled under strict Soviet regimes and are still deferential towards teachers. Even established migrants are sometimes baffled by the British system. Vilma Midvertyo, who arrived from Lithuania over a decade ago, says that although she likes the support that teachers give pupils, their relentless positivity can make it hard to find out how well her son is actually doing.

Other explanations for the poor performance may have escaped measurement. As Mr Strand notes, the data do not reflect the linguistic ability of the pupil beyond the fact that they speak a foreign language at home. A Mandarin-speaker who has been in Britain his whole life will probably have a better grasp of English than a recent Latvian arrival, for example. Similarly, uptake of benefits such as free school meals is thought to be low, meaning the data may not capture the extent of migrants’ poverty.

That suggests that results will improve as the new arrivals get richer and come to speak better English. But it is not yet clear whether central and eastern European children will thrive in British schools, as some other migrant groups have done. Anne Hill, head of Thomas Clarkson Academy, says that at her previous school in Northampton, migrant parents (mostly from Africa) were almost uniformly determined that their children would go on to become professionals such as doctors or lawyers. Parents at her current school are not so ambitious. Much depends on whether that can change.