Is the Integration of Newcomers Mediated by the School ?

The problems of schooling for foreigners can be devided into three issues: pupil education, adult training and university students. Each issue is different in terms of different problems and their presentation. Pupils are second or third generation foreigners; adults are normally first generation foreigners, while university students can belong either to the first, or to successive generations of foreigners. As regards pupils and students in school (from primary to secondary school, vocational, arts and music schools) we wrongly suppose that their problems are on the attendant side, and almost always due to the poor language expertise. For this reason we speak of immigrants at school. But in reality also the school system has many delicate problems to face, such as the acceptance of newcomers, multicultural education, updating teachers, the relationship with the families of pupils, communication between foreign and native pupils, education results, dropout rates and so on. This is the reason it is better to say immigrants and school meaning that the relationship is two sided, and the schools also have responsibilities and tasks. The second question concerns adult training. The paper examines different issues concerning foreign adult attendance at school, the aims of such attendance, professional training and teaching in public or private institutions. The third question concerns foreign university students. In Italy the number of students has continuously decreased from the ’80s, but quite recently has grown again. This is due not only to an increase in students coming from abroad, but mainly due to foreign students in terms of citizenship who have been residents in Italy for many years and have, therefore, attended Italian schools. Another important matter in these last years is the rapid and continuous increase of female participation: while in the ’90s male attendance was about double compared to female attendance, today the number of girls is higher.