Effective Measures in Attention to Cultural Diversity from an Inclusive Perspective

High immigration rates in public secondary schools in the Autonomous Community of Madrid have created a new educational scenario which is both described differently and treated differently depending on the inclusiveness of each school's culture. The goal of this article is to report on a number of educational actions which seem to respond efficiently to the cultural diversity of those secondary schools with immigration rates above 20%, as perceived by the main education providers (schoolteachers, counsellors and headmasters). A qualitative methodology based on discussion groups is used. Five groups of headmasters, counsellors and schoolteachers from 19 schools in Madrid are analyzed. The subjects are differentiated as belonging to either administrative or inclusive schools, where "administrative schools" are defined as those that apply the education authority's rules on treatment of diversity in a strictly literal sense, and "inclusive schools" are those that make changes planned by the school itself in order to address specific problems, focusing on improving student performance and avoiding exclusive practices. Results show how traditional methods do not seem to work in multicultural classrooms with high immigration rates. The participants from the different types of schools coincide in their description of the multicultural situation in our classrooms as something that creates complexity, but they differ on perceiving such situations as a problem. Everything seems to indicate that school improvement in these new scenarios demands an inclusive response by the school community as a whole, combined with optimism and engagement, a constant search for solutions to specific problems, cooperative preparatory work in the planning of activities and a range of content arrayed around certain objectives that everybody should reach, a methodological change, a more rational use of resources and pedagogical training for the educational team.