The fourth and final dimension of the ECEPAA Index, the institutional one, makes a radical change in perspective compared to the previous ones. While the scholastic, relational, and extracurricular dimensions focus primarily on the student and family experience, the institutional dimension focuses on the systemic conditions that schools, as organizations, implement to promote or hinder inclusion.
The goal is to investigate the responsibilities of the school as an institution, whether the school offers adequate conditions, resources and skills to ensure the effective inclusion of students with migrant background.
The underlying assumption is that inclusion cannot rely solely on individual effort or on the goodwill of teachers, but requires institutions that are prepared, aware, and equipped with adequate tools. In the absence of such structures, inclusion risks becoming dependent on personal initiative or on the chance of attending a particularly supportive school. To analyze this complexity, the institutional dimension is divided into five variables, each of which observes a specific aspect of school policies and practices.

How does this dimension work?

Five variables make up this dimension.
The presence and effective role of the cultural mediator — not the one convened for emergencies, but the one integrated into class councils and day-to-day management.
The accessibility of school-family communication, with a critical note on the use of the student himself as a translator during interviews with parents, a widespread practice and documented as problematic.
The quality of intercultural practices, with the fundamental distinction between occasional folkloristic celebrations and practices integrated into the curriculum.
Teacher training —both initial and ongoing— and the perception of one’s own preparation. Finally, the reception protocol for newly arrived students, with its most effective concrete form: the “student buddy,” a companion who accompanies the newcomer in the first few days.

The institutional dimension is the only one in which the school is fully responsible. And it is also the most directly modifiable through policies: resources can be allocated, training can be organized, protocols can be written and applied. An institution that does not invest in these tools implicitly transfers the entire burden of inclusion onto the student and the family. It’s not inclusion. It is exclusion by omission.

Inclusion is neither solely the result of a student’s merits or shortcomings, nor is it solely the result of school policies. It is the outcome of a complex and dynamic interplay between the student’s characteristics and background, the conditions and practices of the school, and the opportunities and constraints of the local community in which the school is situated.

With this fourth dimension, the ECEPAA Index is complete. Taken together, the four dimensions — formal school outcomes, relational dynamics, extracurricular participation, and institutional preparedness — form a composite picture of what inclusion actually requires: not individual resilience, but systemic conditions.

The full ECEPAA Report 2026 brings these dimensions together for the first time, comparing schools across Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Greece, and producing the evidence base that policy and practice need to move from good intentions to measurable change.

Download here the full working paper on the Institutional Dimension to go deeper into the methodology and the four variables.