Foreign students in class, after the Valditara proposal the debate ignites. Here’s the situation today (and what other countries are doing)

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The integration of immigrant students at school has reignited the political debate. On the one hand, the majority and the Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara , recalled the need for an intervention to encourage, not just in words, their real integration, in the light of constitutional values ​​and in classes where the majority of students are Italian. On the other, the opposition believes that the executive only carries out propaganda. But what do the numbers really say? That the system today is not working, and for the approximately 900 thousand immigrant students present in Italian schools, learning and integration are significantly behind schedule.

Photography today

In reality, in Italy there has already been a limit on the number of foreign students per class for some time. Based on a January 2010 circular from the Ministry of Education at the time led by Mariastella Gelmini, the number of foreign students with a reduced knowledge of the Italian language must not exceed 30% of those enrolled in each class and in each school, even if there can be any exceptions. In short, it is a sort of recommendation. And many institutes have worked independently. In the 2021/2022 school year, 7.2% of all schools in Italy had more than 30% foreign students, while schools with zero foreigners were 18%, with large differences between regions: the one with the percentage the highest number of schools without foreign students is Sardinia, while in the North the percentage of classes exceeding 30% is especially high in Lombardy, Emilia Romagna and Veneto. And the schools most in trouble are those in the suburbs, especially in large cities.

Learning gaps and high dispersion

Unfortunately, the problem exists, and the main statistical findings demonstrate it. According to Istat, in 2022 explicit school dropout was 9.8% for Italian students, 30.1% for foreigners. This contributed, among other things, to increasing the overall dropout rate to 11.5%. Not only. From the Invalsi 2023 source, in Italian, there is a negative difference of 21.9% for first generation foreign students, compared to Italians, and of 15.3% for second generation foreigners. The difference is slightly lower regarding mathematics, -16.5% and -11.1 percent respectively. Immigrant students do better in English.

What’s happening in Europe

Faced with these numbers, something needs to be done, Minister Valditara rightly claims. What’s happening in Europe? The integration models can be summarized as follows: in some countries, such as Italy, foreign pupils are included in ordinary classes, in other countries they follow, for a certain period of time, a distinct school offering (preparatory classes, or even called reception or transition classes); in many countries a combination is used whereby pupils follow lessons in the mainstream class and others as part of separate provision.

The idea of ​​the government

However, one thing is certain and common to all. Without adequate linguistic skills it is effectively impossible to achieve effective and lasting integration. OECD studies, based on the age of the child’s arrival, indicate variable times: to learn the language for daily communication around two years, to follow the teaching activity profitably it can take up to 5-6 years. The idea of ​​the government, and of Minister Valditara, is not to divide Italian and first generation foreign students, assigning the latter to ghetto classes. However, each immigrant student will always be enrolled together with their Italian classmates in the same class. To encourage and accelerate a true path of inclusion, an enhancement and personalization of teaching specifically for Italian and possibly mathematics has been proposed. In practice, and in compliance with scholastic autonomy, in the event of poor mastery of Italian on the part of the student, institutions will be able to opt for enhancement classes, for the duration of the Italian lessons only, or carry out afternoon language enhancement activities, which however must be mandatory. Leaving the immigrant student, for the remainder of the course, in the same class together with the other classmates.