The "Scuolemigranti" network in Italy provides information to foreign parents who are having difficulty enrolling their children in school.
Enrolling foreign children in school in Italy is an essential step in terms of education and integration for minors.However, in some cases bureaucratic difficulties arise regarding lack of information, documents, or deadlines for enrollment, especially for foreign children who arrived in Italy during the summer. A network called "Scuolemigranti", which brings together associations that teach Italian as a second language free of charge to migrant children and adults in Rome and the region of Lazio, has developed some useful directions to provide to parents having trouble enrolling their children in school. It also collects reports of problems and offers support to those who have had refusals from the scholastic system.
Information and report collection
According to Article 34 of the Italian Constitution: "School is open to all. Primary instruction, given for at least eight years, is mandatory and free". This principle is valid also for foreign minors, even in cases where they are undocumented migrants. Schooling for 10 years, until the age of 16, became mandatory in Italy in 2006. If a foreign child doesn't find a place in school in Rome, the independent "Scuole di Roma" (Schools of Rome) association has a list of every public school in the Italian capital on the website www.scuolediroma.it. The site provides a map divided by city districts showing the location of each school, with the schools' reception hours and information provided in Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, Romanian, Spanish, English, and French. There's also an email address, info@scuolemigranti.org, which gathers reports about problematic situations in order to pass them along to the Regional Scholastic Office, the Education Ministry, and local officials.
Everyone has a right to education
The deadline to enroll students in school for the 2017-2018 school year was last February. However, in its guidelines for foreign minor reception and integration, the Italian Education Ministry specifies that non-Italian children can be enrolled at any time during the year. In addition to enrolment, the regulations require that for foreign children aged 14 or under, parents must show their own birth certificate and an Italian stay permit, or those of the minor if aged over 14. In irregular cases, the ministry specifies that "the school must however enroll the foreign minor, since the irregular position does not affect the right to education". It also states that school employees are not required to report the undocumented status to authorities.
Parents must also show the school documentation of the child having received the mandatory vaccinations required by the State for enrolment, as well as any documentation attesting to previous education. If this documentation is irregular or incomplete, the minor is enrolled on a "reserved" basis, which doesn't however preclude his or her ability to receive a diploma upon high school graduation.