Is bilingual education sustainable?

We present cross-sectional research to verify whether learning to read in Italian (the participants’ mother language and majority language) is delayed when simultaneously learning to read in English (a second language not spoken in the country). Available evidence considering the specific combination of bilingual orthographies being acquired suggests that there should not be adverse effects on the Italian literacy outcomes of Italian–English immersion students. To verify this hypothesis, the Italian reading performance of three groups of bilinguals educated in 50:50 Italian– English immersion programs in Grades 1, 3 and 5 were compared to that of three control groups of Italian monolingual peers attending mainstream monolingual Italian schools. The second aim was to examine the impact of an Italian–English immersion program on English language and literacy skills. To pursue this goal, we examined the English performance of the bilingual group across Grades 1, 3, and 5. Finally, we aimed to verify whether the language and reading attainments exhibited by the bilingual children in Italian were correlated to their English performance. The results show that bilingual children were not less proficient in Italian than monolingual children; improvement in English was observed across all grades, and performance in Italian was correlated with performance in English.