Indicator history

A recent study conducted by the Cariplo Foundation on secondary school choices, based on government data, highlights that the different choices made by Italians and foreign students are strongly influenced by nationality, even when controlling for status and academic abilities. There appears to be a specific discrimination towards foreign students who are encouraged (and they themselves become inclined) to lower their educational ambitions displaying higher school dropout rates or preferring schools with a more clearly vocational focus. As a consequence, we find a prevalence of foreign students enrolled in vocational routes and schools primarily geared to fast entry in the job market and professionalisation. In the 2008/2009 a.y., 78.5% of foreign students attended technical and vocational institutes.

Apart from this, the Law n.94 passed on the 15^th July 2009 -which established that all foreigners have to display their residence permit when addressing specific demands to public administration agencies – has raised doubts on migrants’ rights to access nurseries, pre-primary schools, upper secondary schools, vocational training after sixteen years of age and social educational services. The Associazione per gli Studi Giuridici sull’Immigrazione has produced a set of documents which argue that migrant students must be granted equality of access to school, to all services that are complementary to the right to education, and equality of conditions with italian minors from pre-primary schools to the completion compulsory education; that is to say, on the basis of constitutionally oriented interpretation of the current legislation, that is not in contrast with the European and international obligations of the Italian state, until they complete their upper secondary school degree or achieve their professional qualification.

On the other hand, there is a reduction in the number of foreign students who are “newcomers” – that is to say of those who began their schooling in their country of origin and later had to interrupt their educational career in order to be reunited with their parents who had already emigrated to Italy, thus finding themselves with a problem of entering the Italian school system. Due to lack of knowledge of the Italian language, this group presents problems in the receptions and initial integration phases. According to a recent study, the presence of “newcomers” involves an excessive workload for teachers, inhibits and slows down the regular progress of the curriculum and causes a sense of inadequacy.

School experiences of children from immigrant families are connected to the families’ migratory experience, which, in turn, is based primarily on the time necessary to complete the reunification process and not on the idea that children will have to be enrolled in Italian schools at a given age. Thus, the main event is adults’ labour-based migratory experience, which in turn determines a set of implications for the family and, consequently, for children’s educational careers.

Source:

Mariagrazia Santagati, "Education", in Fondazione ISMU, The Sixteenth Italian Report on Migration 2010, Milan, McGrawHill, 2011 - http://www.ismu.org/index.php?language=eng

Fondazione Cariplo, Stranieri si nasce... e si rimane? Differenziali nelle scelte scolastiche tra giovani italiani e stranieri, Rapporto di ricerca a cura di Paolo Canino, Collana Quaderni dell’Osservatorio n.3, Anno 2010 - http://www.fondazionecariplo.it/portal/upload/ent3/1/Quad3_web_NEW.pdf