The reform of the Italian school: 14-16 provision

Over the last 4 years the Italian school system has undergone attempts at structural reform backed by differently oriented governments and by Ministers who, virtually, were defining two different ideas of education implying two differently organized systems. However, the differences seem to be more formal than real.

The right wing has openly claimed it will go straight towards a general privatization of the educational system, promoting competition among schools and deregulating the recruitment of teaching staff. The reduction of costs and responsibilities of the government consists in the reduction of school time and in transferring the planning of the educational process for young people to the choices and wages of families.

The centre-left area, in contrast, has claimed to support the public character of education, but has actually shown a tendency to fund Catholic schools and to promote an absolute parity between the private and public systems. This attitude has become quite clear in some specific situations: a problem which has immediately become central in the general reform of the educational system has been the years of compulsory attendance. As this is the main question to define the aims and the structure of 14-16 education, we must try to understand the solutions proposed by the last two Italian Ministers of education.

Minister Moratti, during Berlusconi’s previous government, replaced the idea of compulsory school with the idea of educational and vocational systems based on a rights and duty approach until 18. As a matter of fact, this introduced, after junior high school, the possibility for students to choose vocational courses organized by corporations or company boards instead of following the traditional school courses.

Minister Fioroni, while apparently modifying Minister Moratti’s laws, reintroduced the idea of compulsory education until sixteen, but has literally defined it as an “educational” career but not necessarily an “in-school” career. This has allowed the Regions, which have recently become responsible for educational policies after the federal reform of part of our Constitution, to impose autonomous definition of educational careers. As a consequence, the unity of the school system has been seriously compromised and we have no way now of guaranteeing equal access to knowledge for everybody.

Furthermore, the ambiguity of the distinction between educational and in-school provision has allowed private educational bodies to run courses parallel to the traditional school ones, reducing also their length to the age of 16 instead of 18.

At the moment [this is written before the re-election of the Berlusconi government], we are waiting for political elections in a state of insecurity and confusion, but we can imagine that, whatever the result is, in spite of different rhetoric and proclamations not one of those positive changes that we as social movements defending school as a public service for everybody have been expecting for many years will happen.

In particular, we would like to point out the following risks in the bipartisan policy that’s going on:

1. at the age of 14-16, students will choose between a school career and a vocational career, provided by private subjects or by public/private partnerships among associations of employers, joint vocational ventures, foundations and local administrations (municipalities, regions or districts). It is obvious that this transaction is going to become a real business: these “centres of vocational training” take advantage of public financing moving resources away from state school. Some Regions have encouraged schools/vocational centres partnerships in order to keep disaffected youth in the school system at least until 16. But these students have been put in special classes which have become real ghettos whose main purpose is to bring together at the same time the most varied kinds of discomfort, with impoverished curricula and job-oriented aims. We should remember that the priority of vocational careers is certainly not to ensure citizenship or cultural competences but, rather, low professional competences, responding to entrepreneurs’ demands and assuring quick and short-lived employment.
2. The common tendency in educational policy is to increase the number of students in each class, in order to guarantee substantial savings, without paying any attention to the effectiveness of educational courses and to real opportunities of integration for those who are in difficulty.
3. There is a concrete risk of not paying enough attention to diversity. Over the years the Italian school system has developed vast experience and demonstrated great professionalism in dealing with the integration of students with disabilities. But now we are facing a heavy withdrawal in this sector, with a progressive reduction of human and financial resources. On the other hand, there doesn’t seem to be a real will to support and promote all the positive experiences carried out in recent years by some schools in integrating foreign students in order to make school really inclusive and welcoming. In particular, a great emphasis has been given to the European identity without any attention to those from outside the European Union.
4. Permanent educational staff are going to be reduced and substituted by employees at the vocational formation centres, whose employment will be temporary and insecure and who are not always qualified. And this happens especially in those situations of deprivation where specific competences and high professional skills would be required.
5. The system provides a range of 13 professional qualifications agreed at a European level. These qualifications can be issued only by Regions at the end of three-year vocational careers. From now on, schools won’t be allowed to issue these qualifications, only five-year diplomas. In contrast, until now a special type of high school called professional institutes have provided for an intermediate diploma at the third year and students had the chance to take a further specialisation lasting two more years. It has been an effective answer to demotivated students, who enrolled in short courses and often, having become engaged with education and gaining motivation for longer studies, decided to continue until the final diploma.
6. The system is to be progressively adjusted to the international evaluation system based on tests, that are extremely limiting for teachers and ineffective if we want evaluate the real level of students’ knowledge. Tests seem to be made for verifying basic skills and not critical knowledge.
7. The professional qualification system is to be certified by a dubious certificate of competences. As a matter of fact, professional competences, if linked to a low cultural and educational level, will turn out to be weak and short-term. This choice fits the employers’ requirement for poorly-qualified and vulnerable workers, which means more temporary employment. These young people will not be protected and are unlikely to be given the opportunity to go back to gain further qualifications. Continuing illiteracy will make it impossible for most of them to be reintegrated in the educational system and to take advantage of adult courses.

The risks of privatisation for the 14-16 sector are therefore clear: first of all, it is a question of lack of democracy, considering that a basic right will inevitably be denied to some people. We are talking about the right to education, assured by our Constitution and by all international Charters of Rights, that seems to be particularly important in a knowledge-based society.

On the other hand, conscious citizenship is not assured to a wide number of young people, and especially to those who are already disadvantaged for their particular conditions (physical, cultural, social, economic…). It will become a great problem for the whole society, as a number of citizens won’t be conscious of their rights and duties.

Finally, this choice seems to be short-sighted and unsuccessful even from an economic point of view: in a globalized economy, western societies have to invest in knowledge or they are going to fail to meet the challenge.

Alternative proposals

First of all, we must clearly define the aims of an educational system. As we firmly believe, the first aim of school must be making students aware of their citizenship, of their belonging to a community, so we are facing the denial of a basic right. Given this task, it’s time to rethink our schools globally, from 0 to 18 years of age, as we believe that the conditions for exclusion and difficulties find their origins at nursery school age, and if we think of dealing with them starting with adolescence, our project is inevitably bound to fail.

When we were working with colleagues and parents writing the popular bill called “For a Good School for the Republic”, we realized the need and urgency of having a comprehensive understanding of the educational system. Only from this point of view we will be able to approach the problem of 14-16-year- old students.

Nowadays state schools allow 14-year-old pupils, obviously from the working class, to drop out and be deprived of basic citizenship skills, in order to take up culturally poor careers without any long-term rewarding job opportunities. Instead, our proposal for all male and female students is attendance at in-school courses and, for 14-16 year old students, the building of a unitary two-year cycle made up of a basic curriculum of 30 hours a week plus a specific curriculum of 6 hours. The basic curriculum must be the same for any kind of school and must be mainly based on workshops and active teaching approaches, while the specific curriculum must offer the students an approach to the courses of the three-year cycle in the school they have chosen. Each school can offer extra modules based on labs, classes for guided study, and projects, without exceeding 40 hours a week. The teaching staff of the school will be increased accordingly. During the two-year cycle the passage from one school to another will be free. The new school will have to plan teaching modules for the specific course of studies.

The idea of a unitary two-year cycle for everybody comes from a precise awareness: those who have lived through difficulties need more school, not less. But it must be a school radically different in its organization (long school cycles and a comprehensive approach to school careers), in its teaching styles and in the contents. It would be a huge educational mistake if we believed that reducing literature, maths, arts or foreign language classes would be a solution for those who don’t feel at ease at school. On the contrary, we need more classes, but using different teaching approaches.

What might work? Any innovative teaching approach, from cooperative learning to Feuerstein. Teaching based on workshops and active learning in every subject, even the ones traditionally considered solely theoretical and abstract. The presence of the same teachers in the same class group in order to make group work easier, to help students with difficulties and encourage the best among them to reach excellence. Among 14-16-year-old students theatre workshops have given particularly interesting results in terms of self awareness, self-esteem and motivation. Also the critical use of IT to make classes livelier and involve the students may be a good teaching tool.

All these ingredients will have to lead us to rethink deeply our educational system, first of all introducing compulsory school until 18, secondly postponing the time for choices. The institution of a unitary two-year cycle which goes from age 14 to age 16 would mean for all students access to a more aware citizenship, to a more critical mind, necessary to build up the acquired knowledge and skills necessary for lifelong learning, for which we must get ready.

But it’s clear that, in the context of our governments’ free-trade policies, education must be subjected to the increasingly urgent needs of the economy and the labour market. In Italy, under the centre-left government, all the matters concerning compulsory school and the reform of secondary school were not decided by the Parliamentary Culture Committee, but by the Employment Committee. But it’s important to point out also that under this solely economic approach the educational policy of the EU Committee remains completely short-sighted and bound to failure. Europe can’t be in competition on low-profile jobs with the emerging economies. The only chance we have to be competitive is aiming at high specialization, at knowledge. And it’s difficult to believe that the choices made for education can lead to this goal.

There’s a substantial agreement among the social movements on the features and the aims of the European School we would like to have. An agreement that takes into account freedom, culture, contexts in the different countries where the same educational emergencies turn up: education for aware citizenship; integration of migrant students; integration of students with disabilities; problems and dropping out; relationship with the labour market and with companies. It’s necessary to coordinate our efforts to oppose the free trade policies shared by all the European countries in the field of education. That’s why we will have to take advantage of all the funded cooperative opportunities promoted by the EU, in order to let people know the education we want and to start to build it where it’s possible now.

The documents produced at the European Social Forums and at the international conferences must be put into practice. The good experiences which have been accomplished must be circulated so that other schools may take advantage of them. Just as we encourage group work by pupils, so teachers too need to be able to collaborate together in ‘laboratories of experimentation’ in order to exchange experiences and develop new teaching methods.