Italy and Norway are among the European countries that early-established inclusive school systems with a history dating back to the 1960s of addressing segregating and discriminatory practices towards pupils with a disability (Act 118/71, Act 517/77 and Act 104/92 for Italy; “Integration Act” of 1975 and Education Act of 1998 for Norway), and in both countries this happened after comparable movements from the 1960s onwards, inspired by ideas about integration. However, in both countries recent research data have shown the presence of pull-out and push-out phenomena (Nes, 2014; Demo & Nes2016), that is situations in which some pupils receive education in a different place than their mates do. Despite of the fact that the few existing data suggest that the phenomenon is not marginal, only a few systematic research has been conducted in the two countries. Most of the data focus on pupils with disabilities or with SEN (Ianes & Demo 2015). In both countries, well-documented national research projects show that the majority of the pupils with disability and/or with SEN in compulsory education spend part of their school time outside the class in order to receive special support (Ianes et al. 2013; Wendelborg & Tøssebro2011).

In the literature about educational research the terms push and pull-out generally refer to dropout (Jordan et al. 1994; Treellle et al. 2011) and they are used to differentiate situations in which pupils leave the school because they are attracted by other experiences outside the school (e.g. employment), from others in which pupils leave because of school-internal factors that create distance between them and the school system (e.g. teachers’ attitude towards certain groups of students).  In this paper, many terms are used in a broader sense. Push and pull-out are used to refer to all the situations in which some groups of pupils receive their education in a different place than their mates do, for the whole or just for a part of the school day. This concept includes a wide and various range of phenomena:

1.                   mainstream classes, with an organization that clearly separates some students’ activities from the rest of the class;

2.                   mainstream classes, with parts of the school day spent outside the class;

3.                   established special classes/special units for some groups of pupils within mainstream schools;

4.                   special schools for some groups of pupils;

5.                   Irregular school attendance, part-time school attendance. 

Dropout can be considered the harshest form of push and pull-out that in the end leads to leave the school. Therefore, cases of push and pull-out may also be hidden in the drop-out rates. For the purpose of this project, our emphasis will be on points 1, 2 and 3.

The main objective of this paper is to describe, through reliable statistical data and some qualitative data the phenomenon of pull and push-out in Italy and Norway. We expect the results to contribute to a more detailed description of the phenomenon and a deeper understanding of it in terms of risks or potentials for inclusion. 

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