Gli studenti di origine straniera e la scelta della scuola superiore

[Autom. eng. transl.] In the last 30 years, Italy has experienced a strong growth in the immigrant population, so much so that foreign residents, which went from 625,000 in 1991 to almost 5.2 million in 2021, now exceed 8.8% of the national population. At the dawn of the migratory phenomenon, the population entering Italy consisted mainly of young males looking for employment. Many of them, once settled in the country, have been joined by their families or have created a new one in Italy. Over time, this has contributed to the increase in the number of young people of foreign origin of school age living in our country, both because they immigrated following their mothers who reunited with their husbands and companions (first generation immigrants) and because they were born in Italy to immigrant parents (second generation immigrants). Consequently, immigration has also had a significant impact on the Italian school system, in which foreign students increased from 25,000 in 1991 to over 860,000 in 2019. These students now represent around 10% of the total school population, with an incidence which varies from 11.5% in primary school to 7.4% in secondary school and which varies a lot between territorial contexts (Santagati and Colussi, 2020). even when personal characteristics and educational results are taken into account, first generation foreign students are less likely to choose a high school, which guarantees easier access to university, than their Italian colleagues. The difference compared to Italians is reduced for second generation students, but it does not disappear completely. Furthermore, this trend seems to be more pronounced in the case of foreign girls rather than boys. We have observed that foreign students, with the same results achieved in the Invalsi tests, obtain lower marks from their teachers than their Italian counterparts. Furthermore, the lower grades also seem to influence the orientation councils, which more frequently direct immigrant students to schools from which the probability of entering university is lower (e.g. vocational institutes). Furthermore, the differences in school choices between foreign and Italian students persist even when only students who have obtained guidance from their teachers to attend a high school are considered.