Students with an Immigrant Background: Lights and Shadows of the Italian School System

Multilingual societies and multilingual classrooms are fast growing global phenomena. As far as Italy is concerned, it is right to say that linguistic and cultural homogeneity never belonged to the Italian demographic composition. Italy may be one of the richest countries in Europe when it comes to linguistic variety; the remarkable number of minority languages that are spoken in Italy includes historical languages, cross-border languages and regional languages (known as “dialects”). As a consequence of rapid intensification in global mobility and migration, the variety of languages and cultures within classrooms has further increased: data show that 10% of the school population has a migratory background. The Italian school system has been facing the challenges of integration and language is a central issue in this process. Even though the Article 3 of the Italian Constitution states that “It is the responsibility of the Republic to remove the economic and social obstacles which, by limiting the freedom and equality of citizens, prevent the full development of the human person and the effective participation of all workers in the political, economic and social organisation of the country”, there are signs that part of the Italian school system is not currently able to significantly contributing in removing those social obstacles, in particular for those with a migratory background. In order to assess whether the school system accomplishes its educational goals, it is necessary to focus on two main issues: number of students “on track” with their studies and foreign students school performance compared to Italian students and to the educational goals. According to statistics, Italy is experiencing an increase in the number of students falling out of the system. Educational delay and dropout rates have a significantly alarming impact on students with migratory background, especially in high school. Invalsi tests in Italy, carried out by means of objective testing, conceived on the basis of the already existing OECD PISA tests, arose out of a need to measure the learning outcomes of some key competences, and therefore to encourage and verify the needed transformation/innovation of the Italian school system. With regard to the educational goals, the results of the 2019 Invalsi tests (before Covid pandemic) show a slight improvement in the disparity but the scores are still significantly lower for non-native speakers, especially in Math and Italian. As a result of the pandemic, the pre-existing social and territorial disparity (between North and South of Italy) has increased with severe consequences in terms of school performance just as the 2021 Invalsi tests show. It is very clear that the gap between Italian students and students with migratory background results, mainly deriving from a linguistic gap, it is the school’s task to eliminate the disparity and help the process of integration starting from an adequate linguistic support, as stated by the Constitution. Thus, our contribution aims, on the one hand, at exploring the socio-linguistic and educational issues students with migratory background are dealing with and analyses how far long we are with narrowing the gap between native Italian-speakers and students with migratory background in terms of educational success and social inclusion, showing data from INVALSI 2021 and comparing the two groups’ performances; on the other hand, it aims at showing some best practices some good practices implemented in Italian schools and based on the valorization of the linguistic-cultural diversity present in the classroom.