Our classes are increasingly multi-ethnic: cases like the Pioltello school, where 43% of the pupils are of non-Italian origin, are not isolated.
Especially in Lombardy, the region that has the highest number of these students: 222,364, which represents a quarter of the total in Italy.
Here, as in other areas, it is very common to fail to comply with what the regulations strongly suggest: keeping the share of foreign students below 30% per class.
The reason for the limitation is linguistic, so depending on the skills shown by the students in this area it can be overcome or modified.
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However, at the end of the fair, especially in compulsory education, applications for enrollment cannot be rejected for "migratory reasons" and must be accepted in the institutions in the area where the users live.
Which means that this limit is often exceeded.
As shown by an analysis carried out by the Skuola.net portal based on the latest official data from the Ministry of Education and Merit - relating to the 2021/2022 school year - the situations of overcrowding of pupils of non-Italian origin in our schools are, in fact, very widespread.
At a national level, 6.8% of classes - approximately 1 in 15 - have a share of foreign students greater than 30%.
With a further peak of 11.2% in primary school.
Furthermore, the constant growth of the phenomenon should be noted: the figure was 5.3% just over five years ago.
Religious differences, therefore, could exist almost everywhere.
And in some cases they could concern almost the majority of enrolled students: in 3.3% of classes foreign students make up over 40%.
Lombardy itself - the region to which the institute of discord belongs (Pioltello is near Milan) - is one of the areas in which the concentration of schools above the threshold indicated by the Ministry is most evident: it happens in 14% of classes, or one in 7 First there is only Emilia-Romagna (17.4%).
Even if, in absolute terms, Lombardy rises to the top of the ranking, with 1,100 classes in which the number of pupils of non-Italian citizenship exceeds the recommended limit (Emilia-Romagna has 599).
Double-digit percentages also in Veneto (11.3%, equal to 484 schools) and Liguria (12%);
but in the latter case, in absolute terms, there are not very many such situations.
The share is also high in Piedmont (9.8%), Tuscany (9.7%) and Friuli Venezia Giulia (9.6%).
On the other hand, the least exposed contexts from this point of view are in Sardinia (0.5% of classes with more than 30% of foreign students), Puglia (0.9%), Campania (1.2%), Basilicata and Molise (both 1.3%).
“Pupils of non-Italian citizenship represent 10% of our school population: 872,000 students who clearly don't bother to distribute themselves evenly across the national territory.
Which means being faced with situations in which they represent the majority or almost of the students present, which happens in one class out of 25, or where there isn't even one, as happens in one case out of 5. Not being able to move the students as refrigerators to make their distribution homogeneous, in some areas it is impossible not to find oneself faced with situations like that of the Pioltello school.
The problems, at least from an educational point of view, arise above all when pupils of non-Italian origin do not have adequate linguistic skills for the school level they have reached".
Thus comments Daniele Grassucci, director of Skuola.net.
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