The children of immigrants to the Netherlands are performing better at school but are still more likely to have spells without work and to earn less than the average person, according to new research from national statistics agency CBS.

In the previous school year, 49% of second generation children were told they could go into pre-college (havo) or pre-university (vwo) streams at secondary school, compared with 38% in the 2011/12 school year.

The rise is much higher than that for the total school population. Some 57% of all children are now given havo or vwo advice, compared with 54% 11 years ago.

The biggest increase was among children with Moroccan parents. Some 50% of them are now put in pre-college or university streams, compared with 34% in the previous sample.

The research comes at a time when far-right politicians are making capital out of a perceived “lack of integration” in some immigrant groups.

Yet despite the increase in educational opportunities, second generation children are more likely to live in small homes, face unemployment at some point and earn less than the average, CBS researcher Ruben van Galen said.

That situation is different for second generation whose parents come from EU countries such as Poland, he said. “They are more likely to be in work and less likely to claim benefits than the average Dutch person,” he said.

The figures come from the CBS’s annual integration monitor which compares first and second generation immigrants with the population as a whole. Some 16% of the current Dutch population were born abroad and a further 12% have at least one parent who was born in another country.

The research also shows that 2.8% of people whose parents were both born abroad are suspected by the police of committing a crime at some point, and that rises to 3.2% for people of Caribbean heritage. Some 0.8% of the population as a whole are suspected of committing crimes.

But the figures related to crime suspects, not convictions, the CBS points out. “People with two parents born abroad are more likely to be suspects, more likely to be victims of crime and more likely to feel unsafe in their surroundings,” the report said.