The percentage of students who are not of Italian nationality in the Italian school system increased slightly in 2020-21. Of the more than 860,000 foreign students, approximately 66.7% is of second generation, meaning they were born on Italian soil.
The percentage of non-Italian nationals in Italian schools has slightly increased for the first time since 1983-84 when reliable data on school registrations was first collected. In the 2020-21 school year, 10.3% of Italy's school population was non-Italian, approximately 865,388.
Although the actual number of non-Italian students has decreased by around 11,000 compared to the previous year (-1.3%), the percentage has increased slightly because the overall number of students in Italy has also decreased by almost 121,000 (-1,4%).
Moreover, the percentage of non-Italian students who were born on Italian soil has reached 66.7% of the total, that's two in three foreign students. The percentage has also increased slightly from 65.4% in 2019-20.
The figures were published on the Italian education ministry's website.
Over 44% is of European origin
Students of non-Italian nationality hail from nearly 200 different countries across the world. Approximately 44.95% are of European origin, a figure which has remained relatively stable, albeit with a slight decrease.
It is followed by children and youngsters from African countries (26.9%) and Asians (20.2%).
The most significant decrease was registered in pre-school (-12,742 boys and girls), followed by primary school (-8,000) and middle school (-3,550).
Vice-versa, in high school, there is an increase of over 13,000 youngsters.
Therefore the total decrease of the number of non-Italian national students comes down to 11,400.
Education rate among foreign students is the same as Italian students
The schooling rates are the same as those of Italian students both for the ages of 6-13 (nearly 100%) and for those ages 14-16 (94.1%), while for the 17-18 age bracket the rate for non-Italians drops to 77.4%.
Nearly 65.3% of students coming from foreign countries live in northern Italy. Approximately 22.2% live the center of Italy and only 12.5% in southern Italy, figures show.
The region with the highest number of foreign students is Lombardy, which last year had 220,771 foreign students enrolled it its schools, this is over one forth of the total present in Italy (25.5%).