The Italian education system is effective at primary school level but later deteriorates, undermining economy and society
Italian primary school children are good students – they’re good readers and understand their lessons well, better than their German, French and Spanish peers. As their learning path progresses, however, things get worse and reach deplorable levels: one student out of two reaches the end of high school without having acquired basic skills in Italian, English and maths.
Basically: the more you grow, the less you know. Thus, we’ve ended up in the absurd situation where 47% of the Italian people have lost their literacy skills and are functioning illiterates, i.e. unable to effectively use basic reading, writing and maths skills in daily life – almost an Italian person out of two.
Here’s a snapshot of the education crisis, which also has an impact on civic awareness and democratic participation, on economic development and social responsibility – a major emergency that’s taking a great toll on Italy.
First of all, let’s take a look at the data. According to the 2021 IEA PIRLS survey, coordinated by Boston College and presented in the past few days at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, 97% of Italian nine-year-old children can flawlessly read a text and understand its meaning. The survey was undertaken in 57 countries around the world and involved 400,000 students, 380,000 parents and 20,000 teachers. The highest-ranking countries are, in order: Singapore (573 points), Hong Kong, Great Britain, Denmark and Norway, and then there’s Italy, with 537 points, a score higher than that of Germany (524), Spain (521), France (514) and so on. The EU average is of 527 points.
A good result for Italian children. Moreover, in Italy, as in other countries, girls are raising the average, with a difference of 7 points as compared to boys (something to be pondered about and constantly fostered, in higher education too, by encouraging them to take STEM (scientific) subjects – subjects where girls find themselves at a disadvantage due to traditional reprehensible biases, neglect or prejudice.
Furthermore, when taking a better look we can also glimpse a few more issues. A decrease of 11 points as compared to five years ago (also a consequence of the learning gap caused by Covid), while the impact of territorial disparities keeps on growing, with the South of Italy struggling (36 points less than the North – a severe increase considering it amounted to 12 points in 2006).
We need to insist on the dissemination of high-quality teaching, then. This can be achieved through the wise investment of PNRR (Italian recovery and resilience plan) funds aimed at supporting young people and their education (the EU Recovery Plan is called “Next Generation” for a reason), and, in this era dominated by the “knowledge economy”, by looking at education, scientific research and culture as the key cornerstones for a better quality of civic and social life throughout Italy, as well as for sustainable, environmental and social development.
Here’s a crucial issue: Italy’s competitiveness is closely related to our capacity for innovation, and innovation requires knowledge, especially in our times of Artificial Intelligence and even in the simplest forms it assumes. It requires compulsory education, of course – from primary school (learning about its good performance is excellent news) to university – but it also needs further education: life (life-long learning, as economists term it). “In a world where abilities age rapidly, the challenge for the educational sphere is to teach how to learn”, states Francesco Profumo, former dean of the Polytechnic University of Turin, former Italian minister of Education, Universities and Research and now president of philanthropic foundation Compagnia di San Paolo.
But what should we learn? Well, how to revive the best Italian traditions, insisting on the synergy between humanities and scientific knowledge, passion for beauty and taste for technological innovation. Greek and Latin, for an open and structured dialogue, and the engineering and critical skills of Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo, Galileo Galilei. Looking at tradition not as an “urn for ashes” but as a drive for change. Acquire a so-called “polytechnic” wisdom – rereading Primo Levi and his extraordinary books, such as La chiave a stella (The wrench) on mechanics and Il sistema periodico (The periodic table) on chemistry, should be enough to remember the value of this skill.
Related to this, intriguing news come from Naples, which is at the centre of a project involving the use of Lego bricks to teach maths. It’s the MATABI project (“maths” and “ability”), curated by the Agnelli Foundation, the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Lego Foundation, and involving 88 primary school classes throughout Italy, with 30 of them in Naples. The aim is to increase scientific and mathematical knowledge, with a special focus on girls, in order to immediately filter out gender bias (in Italy, out of 1,000 inhabitants aged 20 to 29, graduates in scientific disciplines count 13.3 girls and 19.4 boys, as compared to the EU and German averages of 14.9 and 27.9, and 13.2 and 34.7 respectively).
An education and gender gap that’s having a profound impact on Italy’s productivity, and that, therefore, must be drastically reduced in order to strengthen the country’s economic and social growth – a growth founded on the “Made in Italy” ethos, innovation, sophisticated technologies, the quality and sustainability of products and services (the mechatronics, automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, aerospace, shipbuilding, industrial automation and robotics industries, and more traditional sectors such as agro-industry, clothing and furnishing), as well as on development assets such as specialised supply chains and medium and medium-large enterprises (our “pocket multinationals”). All assets that demand entrepreneurship and creativity or, in one word, education.
(Photo Getty Images)
Italian primary school children are good students – they’re good readers and understand their lessons well, better than their German, French and Spanish peers. As their learning path progresses, however, things get worse and reach deplorable levels: one student out of two reaches the end of high school without having acquired basic skills in Italian, English and maths.
Basically: the more you grow, the less you know. Thus, we’ve ended up in the absurd situation where 47% of the Italian people have lost their literacy skills and are functioning illiterates, i.e. unable to effectively use basic reading, writing and maths skills in daily life – almost an Italian person out of two.
Here’s a snapshot of the education crisis, which also has an impact on civic awareness and democratic participation, on economic development and social responsibility – a major emergency that’s taking a great toll on Italy.
First of all, let’s take a look at the data. According to the 2021 IEA PIRLS survey, coordinated by Boston College and presented in the past few days at the Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, 97% of Italian nine-year-old children can flawlessly read a text and understand its meaning. The survey was undertaken in 57 countries around the world and involved 400,000 students, 380,000 parents and 20,000 teachers. The highest-ranking countries are, in order: Singapore (573 points), Hong Kong, Great Britain, Denmark and Norway, and then there’s Italy, with 537 points, a score higher than that of Germany (524), Spain (521), France (514) and so on. The EU average is of 527 points.
A good result for Italian children. Moreover, in Italy, as in other countries, girls are raising the average, with a difference of 7 points as compared to boys (something to be pondered about and constantly fostered, in higher education too, by encouraging them to take STEM (scientific) subjects – subjects where girls find themselves at a disadvantage due to traditional reprehensible biases, neglect or prejudice.
Furthermore, when taking a better look we can also glimpse a few more issues. A decrease of 11 points as compared to five years ago (also a consequence of the learning gap caused by Covid), while the impact of territorial disparities keeps on growing, with the South of Italy struggling (36 points less than the North – a severe increase considering it amounted to 12 points in 2006).
We need to insist on the dissemination of high-quality teaching, then. This can be achieved through the wise investment of PNRR (Italian recovery and resilience plan) funds aimed at supporting young people and their education (the EU Recovery Plan is called “Next Generation” for a reason), and, in this era dominated by the “knowledge economy”, by looking at education, scientific research and culture as the key cornerstones for a better quality of civic and social life throughout Italy, as well as for sustainable, environmental and social development.
Here’s a crucial issue: Italy’s competitiveness is closely related to our capacity for innovation, and innovation requires knowledge, especially in our times of Artificial Intelligence and even in the simplest forms it assumes. It requires compulsory education, of course – from primary school (learning about its good performance is excellent news) to university – but it also needs further education: life (life-long learning, as economists term it). “In a world where abilities age rapidly, the challenge for the educational sphere is to teach how to learn”, states Francesco Profumo, former dean of the Polytechnic University of Turin, former Italian minister of Education, Universities and Research and now president of philanthropic foundation Compagnia di San Paolo.
But what should we learn? Well, how to revive the best Italian traditions, insisting on the synergy between humanities and scientific knowledge, passion for beauty and taste for technological innovation. Greek and Latin, for an open and structured dialogue, and the engineering and critical skills of Leon Battista Alberti, Piero della Francesca, Leonardo, Galileo Galilei. Looking at tradition not as an “urn for ashes” but as a drive for change. Acquire a so-called “polytechnic” wisdom – rereading Primo Levi and his extraordinary books, such as La chiave a stella (The wrench) on mechanics and Il sistema periodico (The periodic table) on chemistry, should be enough to remember the value of this skill.
Related to this, intriguing news come from Naples, which is at the centre of a project involving the use of Lego bricks to teach maths. It’s the MATABI project (“maths” and “ability”), curated by the Agnelli Foundation, the Polytechnic University of Turin and the Lego Foundation, and involving 88 primary school classes throughout Italy, with 30 of them in Naples. The aim is to increase scientific and mathematical knowledge, with a special focus on girls, in order to immediately filter out gender bias (in Italy, out of 1,000 inhabitants aged 20 to 29, graduates in scientific disciplines count 13.3 girls and 19.4 boys, as compared to the EU and German averages of 14.9 and 27.9, and 13.2 and 34.7 respectively).
An education and gender gap that’s having a profound impact on Italy’s productivity, and that, therefore, must be drastically reduced in order to strengthen the country’s economic and social growth – a growth founded on the “Made in Italy” ethos, innovation, sophisticated technologies, the quality and sustainability of products and services (the mechatronics, automotive, chemical, pharmaceutical, aerospace, shipbuilding, industrial automation and robotics industries, and more traditional sectors such as agro-industry, clothing and furnishing), as well as on development assets such as specialised supply chains and medium and medium-large enterprises (our “pocket multinationals”). All assets that demand entrepreneurship and creativity or, in one word, education.
(Photo Getty Images)