OfGianna Fregonara and Orsola Riva
The minister on X talks about the percentages of foreign students in schools. And he stumbles on the subjunctive. Data on the school population
In class “the majority of students must be Italians”. In the aftermath of statements by Matteo Salvini which, reopening the controversy over Ramadan closed by President Mattarella, he hoped for a ceiling of 20 percent of foreigners in class, the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara intervenes by adjusting the percentage upwards. He does so with a post on
The law
Actually a provision on class composition already exists for almost fifteen years and has been fixing the maximum ratio recommended at 30 percent of non-native speaking students. An indication which, however, is difficult to apply in areas with a denser concentration of migrants, especially in the North of the country, where there are schools with more than half of foreigners, also due to a phenomenon known as “white flight”, i.e. the flight of Italian students.
Foreign students in schools
It must be said that if there were no foreigners in our schools, the effects of the ongoing demographic winter – 1.3 million students will be lost in the next ten years – would be even more dramatic. For these 872 thousand students who are not yet Italian – three out of five were born here to foreign parents, but are not entitled to a passport until the age of 18 – Valditara’s recipe can be condensed into one word: “assimilation”. «Inclusion – the minister wrote on X – can happen by assimilating new arrivals on fundamental values, those who are contained in the Constitution and who belong to the identity of those who welcome, or by creating the melting pot society where everyone thinks and does what they want. The first society has an orderly and prosperous future, the second faces disintegration and chaos.”
«Runtings»
The reaction from the opposition was immediate. Irene Manzi of the Democratic Party speaks of “rants by the minister and Salvini”, for the M5S their statements are “propaganda” and moreover inapplicable. For the head of the principals’ union Antonello Giannelli instead Valditara’s speech is “quite acceptable”.
According to the latest ISMU report on migration, schools with more than one foreign student in three (i.e. above the threshold established by law) are 7.2 percent. In Lombardy, a region which alone welcomes a quarter of students with non-Italian citizenship, almost double, 13.2 percent: 150 institutions out of 1,135; in 16 of these non-Italians are the majority. Absolute record in Baranzate where at the Rodari Institute three out of four students are foreign.
Solutions at your fingertips
Rather than getting lost behind percentages, however, we should try to guarantee schools the material conditions to be able to truly integrate foreign students who, with Invalsi data in hand, arrive at the last year of compulsory schooling (i.e. secondary school) with a delay in their Italian skills of one year for those born here and almost two for those who arrived later. If you really want to set a ceiling, you could start with the number of students per classe: it is difficult to imagine teaching tailored to the needs of individuals in classrooms with 30 or more students. Furthermore, eight years after the introduction of the Italian teacher for foreigners, these figures are rarer than pandas. Even in the latest competition currently underway, out of 44 thousand places available, only 51 are reserved for Italian L2 teachers. In fact, this discipline is not included in the schools’ timetables and for this reason it is not possible to count it in the school requirements. A vicious circle known to all but which no one wants to solve. In the absence of anything better, principals often advise, especially in the case of students arriving during the year, to have a diagnosis of disability made, in order to at least be entitled to a support teacher. A shame given that, as Minister Valditara himself recently recalled, foreign students do better on average than Italians in the Invalsi English tests.
March 28, 2024 (modified March 29, 2024 | 00:39)
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