National observatory on the internationalisation of Italian schools and pupil mobility

The National observatory on the internationalisation of Italian schools and pupil mobility was opened in 2009 by Intercultura Foundation, in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and the National Association of School Managers and Senior School Professionals.

The idea arose from the objective difficulty of finding up-to-date and significant data on international activities carried out by schools.

The goals:

• To document the internationalisation processes in schools (teacher and pupil exchanges, international twinning, participation in EU projects, etc.);
• To document the various types of international school mobility, the size of the phenomenon and its extension.
• To investigate various aspects of intercultural education.

The Observatory's ultimate goal is to stimulate the international openness of schools.

To achieve this goal, the Observatory explores the reality through surveys carried out by the research institute IPSOS.

It also provides a number of tools, including training courses for headmasters and teachers, the possibility to self-evaluate one's own school, an informative newsletter, scientific research and legal references.

In the course of 2022 the Observatory will be completely renewed. The Internationalization Index has already been redefined in order to make it more suitable to describe the reality and a new survey of all secondary schools in Italy is underway. The results will be published in Autumn.