” “Integration in schools

“The number of foreign students is increasing in Italy. There are almost 150,000, approximately 2% of the whole school population”, explained Marco Demarie , director of the Giovanni Agnelli Foundation, on opening the proceedings of the international conference “Community in Schools: Immigration and Schooling in Italy and in Europe” held over the last few days in Turin. A survey in nine Italian cities. The immigrant children come from 182 nations, mainly from Albania and Morocco and with a tendency towards the growth of children from non-EU and Latin-American families. The major presence of immigrant children is in primary schools, followed by lower secondary schools, where immigrant pupils have tripled over the last five years. These are the findings of a research project on “Ethnic identity, educational processes and formative models” presented in the course of the conference. Through questionnaires addressed at a thousand or so grade-three pupils in lower secondary schools – half Italians and half immigrants – the survey tried to throw light on some aspects of the process of the integration of foreign adolescents in compulsory schooling in nine Italian cities (Turin, Genoa, Brescia, Padua, Modena, Bologna, Ravenna, Arezzo and Bari). The aspiration to remain in Italy prevails among foreign children (37.1%), whereas 15.3% would prefer to return to their countries of origin, and 13.2% to change nation. Among these children there is a greater conviction of the importance of education and of compulsory schooling than among Italian children in their own age group. Moreover, foreign children, more so than Italian children, consider school as the most important place of their relational experience with other children and believe that their success at school is strongly conditioned both by their degree of well-being/dissatisfaction with the school environment and by their relations with the teachers. 22.7% of immigrant children would prefer a school attended exclusively by students of their own national group, while 28.9% would prefer a school exclusively attended by students of their own religion. Commenting on these data, Graziella Giovannini of the University of Bologna has pointed out that the distinction between Italians and foreigners is open to question, given the fact that the survey has revealed a rapprochement or similarity of aims, motivations and expectations between Italian and foreign children. “Life in common, in the classroom, does not in general produce particular phenomena of rejection or alienation – Graziella continued – but on the contrary is translated into a general appreciation among both Italian and foreign children for an educational process that is open to all cultural, ethnic, national and religious traditions”. The situation in France and in the Low Countries. From a study financed by the Agnelli Foundation and conducted by Lorenzo Fischer, lecturer in Sociology of Education at the University of Turin, on the modes of integration of foreign students in France, it emerges that, social condition being equal, it is foreign children that obtain the best results: “The explanation should be sought in the investment that is made by immigrant families. In France the educational system does not seem to create particular disadvantages for immigrant pupils”. The Dutch situation was presented by Robert Maier of the University of Utrecht. Immigrants of non-western origin form just over 10% of the total Dutch population. The children of these immigrants represent, in turn, over a tenth of the school population, but in the big cities this percentage rises as high as 50%. “The peculiarity of schools in the Netherlands – stressed Maier – is the fact that the system is totally free, so that parents have the faculty to associate together to establish new schools with the characteristics they think most suitable for their children”. That doesn’t mean that disparities in terms of schooling to the detriment of the children of immigrants do not exist. “In recent years, however, this tendency has diminished – pointed out Maier – in part thanks to the efforts of immigrants themselves to adapt as best as possible to the opportunities offered by the Dutch educational system, in part thanks to the progress made by schools in promoting the integration of immigrant children”. Chiara Genisio