The debate over the presence of foreign students in Italian schools does not disappear, after President Mattarella's support for the director of the multi-ethnic school of Pioltello, in the province of Milan, who decided to close the institute to coincide with the end of Ramadan.
THE Minister of Education and Merit Valditaravia social networks, intervenes on the subject to underline the government's position.
“If you accept that the foreigners assimilate to the fundamental values enshrined in the Constitution this will happen more easily if the majority of classes are Italian, if they study Italian more intensively where they do not yet know it well, if Italian history, literature, art and music are taught in depth in schools, if the students' parents will also be involved in learning the Italian language and culture and if they do not live in separate communities. This is the direction we intend to go.” clarifies with a post on X.
Skuola.net analysis
This statement comes the day after the publication of an analysis by the Skuola.net portal on the growing number of foreign students in Italian schools. A presence ever more numerous, report data from the student portal that talks about increasingly multi-ethnic classes. VSschools like the Pioltello school, where 43% of students are of non-Italian origin, are not isolated. Especially in Lombardy, the region with the largest number of these students: 222,364, which represents a quarter of the total in Italy. Here as in other areas, it is very common not to respect what the regulations strongly suggest: keeping the share of foreign students below 30% per class. This limit is often exceeded.
As this shows the analysis carried out by the Skuola.net portal based on the latest official data from the Ministry of Education and Merit – relating to the 2021/2022 school year – situations of overcrowding of students of non-Italian origin in our schools are in fact very widespread. On a national level, 6.8% of courses – about 1 in 15 – has a foreign student quota above 30%. With a new peak at 11.2% in primary school. It is also worth noting the constant growth of the phenomenon: a little over five years ago, it was 5.3%.
“Students of non-Italian nationality represent 10% of our school population: 872,000 students who clearly do not take the trouble to distribute themselves equitably across the national territory. Which means being confronted with situations in which they represent the majority or almost the majority of the students present, which happens in one class out of 25, or when there are not even any, as happens in one case out of five. move the students like refrigerators to make their distribution even, in certain areas it is impossible not to find yourself confronted with situations like that of the Pioltello school. The problems, at least from an educational point of view, arise especially when students of non-Italian origin do not have adequate language skills for the academic level they have reached”, comments Daniele Grassucci, director of Skuola.net.
