In class in September 937 Italian teachers for foreigners

With the start of the new school year, the strengthening of support for foreign pupils, especially those newly arrived in Italy, desired by Minister Giuseppe Valditara, is completed.

The subject has recently come back into the news with the publication of the Invalsi 2025 report, from which the weight on learning of the so-called 'migration background' has once again emerged. At the end of lower secondary school, in fact, first-generation foreign male and female students score 22.6 points lower than the average in Italian, equal to about two years of schooling, which drops to 13.3 points (i.e. one year less) for second-generation students. Moreover, their school drop-out rate is around 30% compared to 9% for Italians. A furrow that is impossible to fill later in high school and that inevitably also ends up affecting the results of the entire 'class group'.

An initial attempt to run for cover already took place last school year and provided schools with extra-curricular reinforcement activities using resources from the National Programme 'PN School and Skills 2021-2027'. From 2025/26, as mentioned above, there will be a teacher dedicated to strengthening Italian for foreigners in classes where there are 20% or more new arrivals in Italy. Thanks to an amendment introduced in Parliament, the additional teacher (on average it will be one per class) will also be deployed where foreign students do not have basic language skills (at least A2 level).

Quantifying the teachers involved was done by the Dm on staffing levels (on which see another article on this page) that arrived at the end of July. There are 937 teachers, of whom 751 for the first cycle (primary and secondary) and 186 for the second cycle, who have qualified in the A-23 degree class ("Italian language for foreign language learners"). The most successful will be Lombardy (182), which almost doubles Lazio (99) and overtakes Tuscany (82) by one hundred units. Having made the premise that this quota does not include the places already allocated to the Provincial Centres for Adult Education before 2025/2026, here we focus on their tasks. Thanks to their arrival, reinforcement courses in Italian can be organised in the afternoon for the most struggling foreign students. In short, it is a question of creating inclusive classes that favour the learning of all pupils, regardless of their origin.

The breakdown by region just mentioned comes as no surprise and in fact covers the areas of greatest need. At the beginning of the 2024/25 school year, 864,425 students with non-Italian citizenship sat in class (12.2% of the total). At kindergarten there were 107,212, at primary school 322,014, at middle school 209,074 and at high school 226,125. In Lombardy there was the highest concentration: here foreign students were now 25.5% of the total (220,068 boys); Emilia Romagna followed with 107,747 non-Italian youngsters, 12.5% of the total, and Veneto with 91,096 (10.5%).