Over one hundred Ukrainians already at school, but Treviso lacks funds for languages

The school insertions of Ukrainian children and young people in Treviso schools, from infancy to high school, have reached 110. They were close to fifty in mid-March, a few weeks after the outbreak of the conflict, then the increases were gradual. It is one of the biggest challenges that the schools of the Marca have found themselves facing in the post Covid post: little bewildered pupils, torn from their homes overnight, to whom they can teach an unknown language. And at the moment the extension of funds for teaching Italian to foreigners has not arrived.

THE COURSES

The arrivals of thousands of Ukrainian refugees in the Marca have changed social relations, the services offered by the institutions, and even the schools. The main challenge, as mentioned, is the teaching of the Italian language: for the first cycle schools, European Fami funds were used (reserved for Italian courses for foreigners), creating small groups of a few students with lessons during school hours. or in the afternoon. A dozen Ukrainian high school students, on the other hand, were directed to courses promoted by the CPIA, Provincial Center for Adult Education: first notions of Italian language to be added to normal school hours. The goal is to become familiar with a new language, which is not known and had never been practiced.

resource node

The medium-sized Martini of Treviso, for example, have been the leader since 2016 of the Fami network (since 1999, more generally, of the network for the integration of foreign students), which brings together 53 schools in the Marca to finance courses, laboratories and projects reserved for schoolchildren of extra origin. EU (but, for other projects, the network has also expanded to the provinces of Venice and Belluno). The institutes included in the network, if interested, have asked to join the projects. “We are now awaiting the extension from Rome of the Fami funds, in order to activate courses also in the summer,” confides Paola Pasqualon, vice-principal Martini and coordinator of the Fami network. “For the use of the funds, the requests of the schools were few, we believed that more would arrive, I can imagine that many have moved independently”, reflects the administrator Barbara Sardella.

THE FUTURE

It remains to be understood what will be in the future of this school population, and more generally of the flow of Ukrainian citizens in the Marca: “We do not yet know how many will remain next year, I know that some are confident of being able to return to their homeland”, adds the manager. of the provincial school office. There are hardly any Ukrainian students who will take the exams in June: «There is the problem of lack of knowledge of Italian. And I know, however, that some students have remained in contact with the teachers of their native country, with the aim of concluding the “Ukrainian school year”: they are doing, if it can be defined as such, distance learning », Sardella concludes.Mattia Toffoletto