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KA201 - Strategic Partnerships for School Education
The Universal Language of Mathematics (2018-1-TR01-KA201-059704)

Italy. Therefore, this research showed that the question of school performance of foreign pupils is not
necessarily only a matter of language but also a question of how long children have lived in Italy and
thus integrated existing social, cultural systems.
It seems above all a practical problem – only 25 percent of foreign children claimed to receive parental
support with their homework, compared to 47 percent of Italian children (over 70 percent is both or
their parents have a university degree). But when the data is separated by the country of origin, is
shows lower grades for children with parents from Yugoslavia, Morocco, Tunisia and Macedonia, but
indicates a positive coefficient for pupils originally from China. Further still, Chinese pupils seem to have
higher levels of achievement than Italian ones. This result is consistent with studies conducted in other
countries (Glick and White, 2004; Portes and Hao 2004). However, it should also be emphasized here
that, despite correlations, there is not necessarily a causality between educational success and
nationality. Rather, such data should be treated with extreme caution and questions about the social
background of the children and parents should be included: In general, the data showed that the
scholastic achievement of children with less educated parents, who live in a rented house, and have
more than 3 siblings, is - whether migrant or not - significantly lower. Additional difficulties in school
might result by the level of competence in the Italian language (as mentioned above – both of children
and their parents); the number of hours dedicated to studies; the socio-economic characteristics of the
family; social capital of a student and the characteristics of his/her friendships and relationships with
peers. (Ricucci 2014)

2.3. Examples of good practice from Italy

In chapter 2.2, the situation of school and education of refugee children in Italy has been explained and
challenges and needs have been discussed. During school year 2015/2016 in Italy there were
approximately 615,000 foreign pupils from all over the world residing in Italy. Hence, for some years
now, migrant pupils are the dynamic component of the Italian school system, which contributes with its
growth in the times when the overall school population is diminishing due to the steady decrease in the
number of Italian pupils. Italy is facing certain difficulties with its transformation from the country of
emigrants to one of immigration partially due to the political situation, and partially because of the
Italian school system’s particularities. However, despite numerous challenges, there are also positive
developments. Two examples of good approaches in school work with refugee children in Italy will be
presented below.
Good practice 1: Training activities on the school integration of migrant pupils in Emilia-Romagna (*a
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region of North Italy).
The analysis of the situation of migrant pupils in the region has shown that many migrant pupils have
often discontinuous presence at school due to different factors: need to work, economic difficulties in
family, wait for the status to be approved, possible relocation in other countries, etc. Also, it became
obvious that schools cannot effectively integrate their foreign pupils by providing them only with Italian

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http://istruzioneer.it/2015/03/19/seminari-di-formazione-sul-tema-dellintegrazione-scolastica-degli-alunni-migranti-in-emilia-romagna/
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