It’s not a passport

Before engaging in a debate about the 30 per cent of ‘foreigners’ in the classroom, it is worth understanding what ‘foreigners’ actually means. In Italy, the administrative category refers to pupils who are not Italian citizens. It is simple to count, but much harder to interpret. This category includes children who arrived just a few months ago and do not speak Italian, as well as children born in Brescia, Prato or Reggio Emilia, who have grown up here, have always spoken Italian, and are classified as ‘foreigners’ solely because they do not hold an Italian passport. Today, there are around 950,000 such pupils – just over 11 per cent of the student population – and around two-thirds were born in Italy. The first misunderstanding is therefore this: citizenship, migrant background and language difficulties are not the same thing. Moreover, Italy already has a cap in place. A 2010 ministerial circular, still referred to in the enrolment guidelines, sets ‘as a rule’ a maximum of 30 per cent of pupils with non-Italian citizenship or limited knowledge of Italian per class. This is not a law and allows for regional adjustments. The government now wishes to make this principle more binding. The technical problem, highlighted by headteachers, is clear: if the school population in a neighbourhood is already largely of foreign origin, in order to comply with the cap, pupils must be distributed across different schools, which conflicts with the criterion of proximity. A comparison with other European countries is instructive. In France, there is no national cap. The focus is on newly arrived pupils who have not yet mastered French. The aim is to integrate them into mainstream classes, supplemented where necessary by dedicated language learning units. In 2023–24, there were 88,500 such pupils, and nine out of ten received specific support for French as a second language. In Germany, there is no federal rule comparable to our 30 per cent threshold, partly because schooling is the responsibility of the Länder. In Berlin, new arrivals who do not speak German can attend ‘Willkommensklassen’ – small-scale welcome classes – with the aim of moving on to mainstream classes as soon as possible; six- and seven-year-olds are generally placed directly into the mainstream system. In Hamburg, too, the deciding factor is language: those who do not know German can join preparatory classes and move into the ‘Regelklasse’ within about a year. Spain follows a third approach. The law obliges local authorities to ensure an ‘appropriate and balanced’ distribution of pupils requiring educational support, including between state and state-subsidised private schools, to prevent segregation. However, this category includes those who enter the system late, those with serious difficulties with the language of instruction, and those in situations of socio-educational vulnerability. Finally, in England, a state school cannot refuse a child on the grounds of nationality or immigration status.

The debate presents arguments on both sides. In favour of intervention lies a common principle: concentrating too many pupils with significant linguistic and social needs within the same school can complicate the educational process, and many systems seek to reduce such concentrations. But there is also a strong counter-argument: citizenship is a crude indicator. The OECD shows that the achievement gaps among pupils from migrant backgrounds depend to a large extent on socio-economic and linguistic conditions, and narrow significantly when these factors are taken into account. In short, the problem exists. But the most useful question is not how many foreign passports there are in a class. It is how many children need, at the same time and in the same place, extra help to learn alongside their peers.