For immigrant children, access to grammar school is seen as particular educational success. Such success has mainly been explained by social origin and cognitive resources, while motivational aspects are only recently considered. This paper investigates the transition to and school grades in secondary school from a motivational perspective within the framework of expectancy-value theory and asks whether immigrant children are particularly likely to benefit from higher motivational resources and higher parental education. The sample consists of 208 children who participated in the German longitudinal study AID:A. 104 children with and 104 without immigration background were matched using Propensity Score Matching. All children were in the 3rd or 4th grade of elementary school at T1 (2009) and visited secondary school at T2 (2014/2015). Logistic and linear regression analyses showed that immigrant children had a lower chance of visiting grammar school even when controlling for previous grades. Only immigrant children benefitted from higher self efficacy regarding their access to grammar school and from higher parental education regarding their later school grades. © 2019, The Editors of the Journal.

Immigrant background Self efficacy School transition Social origin School grades

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