Educational Inclusion and Interculturality in the Chilean School System: A Critical Analysis of Official Guidelines for Foreign Students

The increasing presence of foreign students in Chilean schools has positioned intercultural education and the educational inclusion of migrant students as a key challenge for the Chilean education system. To address this, the State of Chile published the “Technical Guidelines for the Educational Inclusion of Foreign Students (TGEIFS)”, a document recommended by the Ministry of Education to schools to guide the schooling process of migrant students. This study aimed to analyze the conceptual foundations and institutional strategies guiding the educational inclusion of foreign students in Chile, based on a qualitative examination of the TGEIFS, identifying the central categories that structure the document and their implications for pedagogical practices and intercultural school management. The research adopted a documentary design framed within the interpretive paradigm, from a comprehensive-hermeneutic perspective. Three central categories were identified: diversity and interculturality, educational inclusion, and pedagogical practices and intercultural school management. The findings showed that the TGEIFS was framed in a language that emphasized rights and the positive valuation of diversity, proposing an intercultural approach that seeks to move beyond assimilationism and mere tolerance. However, from a critical perspective, the document primarily focused on proposing actions to address the consequences of power imbalances between cultures, rather than questioning the structural causes that produce them. This may be explained by the technical rationale that guides the document, whose main purpose is to provide tools for educational management rather than critically examining reality. These findings suggest strengthening the connection between intercultural principles and their practical implementation in schools.