Inca school has pupils from 18 countries

INCA
THE teaching staff at the Llevant d'Inca school have expressed concern over the growing number of foreign students registered at the centre for the 2007-2008 school year.

In the first year of the Infants (3 year olds) 21 children have been registered, of whom only four are Spanish, meaning that the proportion of foreigners is 80.95 percent in just this one case.

Of the 254 students registered in this school for the next academic year, 163 are foreigners (54 South Americans, 94 Moroccans, nine from East European countries and six from other countries).

The rest are Spanish. There are already 18 nationalities within the school.
The school board has questioned why foreign students are concentrated into this school, while the rest of the schools in Inca have a much lower percentage of foreign students.

The headmistress of the school, Margalida Rossello, said that “all the new students who have registered for our school this year have given the Llevant school as their first choice”. “Why do they want to come here? Because we already have a lot of foreigners, and it is very difficult to break the circle that we are in, or that we have been put in. Many new students already have brothers or sisters or friends in the school and so the circle continues”, said Rossello.

She has asked for a new teacher to deal with this variety of nationalities.
Rossello warned, “the problem is that, instead of using education as a tool for integration, a ghetto school is being created in Inca”. “Everybody has the same rights, but you need to know where the limit of free choice is. “Just as there is a limited number of places for children with special needs, we think we need to limit the number of foreign students per class”.