Immigration has been a key reason behind London's high achievement in school standards, the former education secretary Michael Gove has said.
Addressing an international education conference, Mr Gove highlighted the importance of immigrant and refugee families pushing up results.
He said migrant parents had "high expectations" for their children.
But Mr Gove, a leading campaigner for Brexit, said migration had also created "pressure on services".
The capital's schools have consistently outperformed the rest of England in exam results - which Mr Gove linked to the ambitions of migrant families.
"There's lots of evidence that London having become more diverse has contributed to educational standards rising," Mr Gove told the Global Education and Skills Forum in Dubai.
He said that his own experience as a parent in London had shown him that migrant parents often have "extraordinarily high expectations" of the state school system.
Pupils might be "refugees from Somalia or Kosovo", he said, but their families pushed schools to have high standards and often became the most involved parents.
