Abstract:

Many steps have been taken to avoid poverty from the economic, social, and educational perspective. Actually, the more vulnerable categories of the population – i.e. children, migrants, and women – slowly get small targets, which allow them to improve their life conditions. However, inequality is still prevailing: unfair conditions and treatments could be easily retrieved in many public services, such as education and healthcare.

The National Operative Programme (PON) “For the School – Skills and Environments for Learning” is a national initiative, which provide schools with additional funds to implement interventions aimed at fighting failures in learning and school drop-outs; moreover, it supports special educational initiatives focusing on the migration phenomenon (from an historical, geographical, and political perspective), on cultures and religions; lastly, it finances special learning experienced directed to improve the pupils intercultural, communication, and linguistic skills which are critical to enhance welcoming and integration processes.

In light of these considerations, this paper investigates, adopting a longitudinal and comparative perspective, the Advices co-financed by the Social European Fund (FSE) launched by MIUR (Italian Ministry of Education, University and Research), in order to elicit a potential development path of the Italian system of education and training which is able to achieve the targets listed by the Agenda 2030 for sustainable development, agreed by 193 ONU Countries. In fact, through these initiatives, the school performs as the leading agent in the education and valorisation of differences, promoting integration, intercultural dialogue and religious exchanges, in order to build a strong social cohesion among people.

The study involves all the schools participating to the first and second rounds of the Advices focusing on social inclusion, inequality prevention, and integration.

Keywords:

Social Integration, Cultural integration, Educational sustainability.