Young people and immigrants: the difficulties of integration in Italian and British schools

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16-year-old Maryam, from Somalia, dreams of becoming a doctor. She came to London in 2021 with her mother and siblings, where her father actually lives. At that time she did not speak English. Maryam is in high school and this year will be taking her exams GCSE (General Certificate of Secondary Education). She is afraid because she knows that with her knowledge of English it will not be easy to get a good grade. Standing between her and her dream is the reality of a school system that still isn’t easy enough for non-British people.

Among immigrant children, young people face the greatest difficulties in integrating into school. They are “behind”: girls and boys who face the trauma of immigration at a sensitive age and who are required to have near-impossible skills on short notice. This problem is prevalent in many European countries and affects thousands of young people every year, whether they arrive with their families, are unaccompanied minors, economic migrants, asylum seekers or refugees.

We compared experiences from Italy and the United Kingdom. Although the two countries have different education systems, they tell similar stories.

London: Teachers’ work and the exam barrier

Immigrant students are not easy to count: in the UK they fall into the category of “EAL students” (English as an Additional Language, meaning English is not their first language). There are over 1.6 million EAL pupils in England, 19.5 per cent of all pupils (data from UK Government 2021).

In Italy, on the other hand, nationality is taken into account: since the last census, there are 865,388 non-Italian students – 10.3 percent of the total (Ministry of Education data Wed 2020-21). However, these figures also take into account children living in the country.