​Anna: Today we're talking about something that matters enormously if you're thinking of moving here with children. What is actually like to grow up and to go to school in Italy? There's a lot of mythology around the Italian education system.

It's chaotic or outdated. Others, imagine something like idyllic and community driven, but the truth as usual sits somewhere in between.

Luca: That's right. Hi Anna. So if you zoom out and look at the data, Italy's broadly in line with the average of developed countries. In the latest PISA rankings, the PISA rankings are these international rankings of various types of education, Italian 15 year olds score around the average in maths. A little bit above average in reading and a little bit below in science, Roughly three quarters of the students [00:01:00] reach solid of baseline across subjects, and where it is weaker is at the very top end.

There are fewer academic high flyers than in some Northern European and Asian systems. So it's a system that works and works fairly well, but it is not especially elite. But we don't want to talk about the data. You'll be happy to hear that, Anna. We actually want to talk about what it feels like and, um, talking about that you actually grew up in that, inside the Italian system. Talking about the big picture, what did it feel like to grow up in a small Italian town?

Anna: I actually feel very lucky, because, you know, there is this kind of freedom that just comes with it naturally. So you know, your village, you can basically walk the whole thing and that makes you feel independent, even if you're like just a kid. So, you know, I just grab my bike, I go buy bread or text my friends to figure out when to meet up.

I'm going to cinema. It seems like I'm [00:02:00] still doing these things, but

Luca: I know the cinema in your town, uh, it's like, uh, tiny, but you know, still kids going to the center by themselves. It's not taken for granted these days.

Anna: So yeah. You know, little things, but they made me feel independent. And because there's less stuff to do, you end up being more creative about it. So, you know, you're playing the hills behind the house.

You make things up, you, you figure things out on your own. And I think that shapes you in a good way. And I think that it, at least back then it felt really safe.

Luca: Maybe we'll talk in the future about whether it feels less safe now, but anyway. Yeah, that sense of embeddedness in a place is something the expat families often underestimate. It isn't just about test scores, it is more about the feeling of being a child in Italy.

But since we're talking about schools, most Italian children attend public schools run by the state, and the [00:03:00] state system is what carries the country. There are private schools, but historically have not, they have not been seen as premium. There are income gaps, of course. Immigrant students have increased now, right now in the makeup, about 11% of the students. And that's double what it was 15 years ago. But once you adjust for the socioeconomic factors of the families of origin, basically, once you cancel out the differences in, family economics immigrant children, Italian children perform the same in the Italian system. So that's good news.

And how did you feel school was like at these different stages, Anna?

Anna: It depends. Kindergarten was wonderful. We had English classes, art, and this thing where the older kids would help the younger ones. So it really felt community driven. Primary school was, it was [00:04:00] good. Apart from the grembiule, I hated it.

Luca: Have to tell, you're gonna have to tell our listeners what the grembiule

Anna: That's awful. It's, like uniform. So we all had to wear it and I hated it.

Luca: You go to a religious school?

Anna: No,

Luca: Okay. We didn't have a uniform in my state school. Maybe it was just your school that

Anna: really?

Luca: Yes. Most schools don't have a uniform.

Anna: Oh, no, no. We were for.

Luca: to break it to you.

Anna: No, no. We were forced to to put that uniform, but

Luca: That's the point of a uniform. You're forced to wear it

Anna: yeah. Well that was so bad. Like younger me was very much, why can't I just express myself and wear what I want? But. Now I understand that the idea is to reduce differences, visible differences between families.

So yeah, high school, depending a lot on which class you ended up in. That matters more than people realize. But there was definitely room for creativity. So [00:05:00] around Halloween or Carnival the old school dress up and they pick the best costume, sometimes there were workshop days where you could, there was so.

Luca: sweet.

Anna: Sometimes there were workshop days where you could sign up for things like skateboarding, graffiti, uh, photography, art classes. It was amazing. But probably was just an exception. Probably was just my school.

Luca: think so.

Anna: No. Oh, okay.

Luca: No, no, no. I think most schools do this. In fact, they do it more now than back in the day, in my opinion.

Anna: Yeah, the only thing that I've more mixed feelings about is how specific Italian school gets. So it's very focused on, exact definitions. Sometimes it pushes you into memorization mode, so you do learn a lot, but you also forget a lot. I like it, but I wasn't that good. Exactly because of this reason

Luca: because you couldn't remember dates.

Anna: Ja.

Luca: Yeah, I know it [00:06:00] is annoying. And that is one, that is one thing about the Italian system, that it is very facts driven.

Anna: Ja.

Luca: dates, remember the names, remember the poems. And, uh, it feels heavy

Anna: Ja.

Luca: It suits some people more than others, right? You know how there are some people in your class that remember everything?

Anyway, I'm a bit like you, meaning that I did everything in the, in the Italian public system, kindergarten, primary high school, university. And I personally think the Italian school system is one of Italy's great institutions, possibly the greatest one, I wanna say kindergarten's excellent.

Whether it is officially Montessori or not, it is heavily influenced always by the kind of learn by do world philosophy. It is free of charge from age three. And you get full daycare with flexible classrooms, structured activities, even when my friends from Northern Europe come and see where my youngest kid goes to school, they are genuinely impressed [00:07:00] by the kindergarten.

What I think is tricky is the jump between kindergarten and primary school. So you spend three years playing in the garden, playing with your friends, and then suddenly you're sitting at the desk for hours. And understandably, children struggle with that transition. Personally I thought that things really turned out for the best in high school. Because you move away from that kind of standardized curriculum and you start doing what you actually want to do, whether it is languages or ancient Greek or STEM or whatever it might be.

But the tricky thing about the Italian system is that you still tested on everything. my friends from the US and the UK. The, the minds are blown by this, that in our finals we are tested on every single subject and they all count the same. So it doesn't matter if you went to a language high school, still have to get passing marks in chemistry, physics, [00:08:00] religion, uh, so on and so forth.

So it can feel pretty heavy, frankly.

Anna: Is it different in the other countries?

Luca: Yeah. In some other countries, you pick some subjects that you want to take to your finals. So you say, I'm gonna do this, this, and this.

Anna: Oh, wow. Amazing.

Luca: That be easy?

Anna: Yeah, I would've skipped like math or something like that.

Luca: Yeah. And history.

Anna: Nå, men..,

Luca: you have found three subjects to do

Anna: no, no languages. Literature. Uh, no, history is important. Like really, it's really

Luca: Sure.

Anna: It's just,

Luca: will study it.

Anna: Yeah, but it does make you well-rounded though, you know?

Luca: Yeah. Yeah, it does do that. It kind of goes back to the, survival of the fittest. One thing that is truly

Anna: Mm-hmm.

Luca: Opinion, I don't know if you disagree, is oral examinations. Maybe 80% of my tests in high school and 90% of my tests at university were oral. So you, you know how it works.

You stand up by the blackboard or the whiteboard and [00:09:00] then, uh, your teacher professor questions you and you have to defend yourself from the attack. I think it works wonders for your presentation skills. For your intellectual resilience and that's something that you carry with you throughout, life.

Anna: Ja,

Luca: if you have the same opinion.

Anna: absolutely 100%. I was way better in oral exams.

Luca: Yeah, yeah, yeah, me too. Where I think that Italy really needs to improve is teaching foreign languages, especially English. We don't have enough native, English speakers. And this is a political third rail, so you never hear a politician say this. My middle high school English teacher was from Sicily and she was a lovely woman, but, you know, uh, her accent was just not understandable to any native speakers. Uh, why would you have someone that can't speak English, teach you English? Doesn't make much sense. Things have improved, but [00:10:00] not that much. And I think people, when they come and visit, they can see that when they go to a bar or restaurant and they like, why can't people speak English?

Uh, this is why they can't speak English.

Anna: How was she like?

Luca: Uh, she was, she was lovely. I won't say her name because she might sue me. You remember that article you wrote this week about suing people in Italy, how easy it is defamation. So I'm not gonna say her name. Uh, she was a lovely woman, but she couldn't speak English. This is irrelevant to our listeners because thankfully they and their kids can already speak English. So that's our problem to fix.

Anna: Yeah, absolutely. But that's true. Like a lot of people learn grammar very well. But speaking confidently, it's, it's another matter.

Luca: That's right. And then there's a matter of the private schools that we touched on before. In Italy, Historically, private schools are not seen as elite. They were often religious institutions. I'm sure you had a couple of friends that ended up in Montagnana to study with the nuns. Did you? Did you Anna?

Anna: There was the [00:11:00] school. Oh my God. My mom wanted, that's another topic, however. Yeah. Lots.

Luca: podcast.

Anna: Ja.

Luca: So you'd be sent to private school if there something wrong with you and things are changing a little bit, but it's actually nice that, everyone in Italy, from the senator's son to the chimney sweeper's daughter, we all go to the same schools because then we have a vested interest in the system working well. Um, now for expats, the matter is a bit different because often they choose international schools because of language continuity. For Italian families, public school is absolutely normal. And I can say myself, I moved back to Italy where my kids, uh, um, mature of them were pretty old, you know, between inverted commas. They were like eight and nine. We actually never spoke Italian at home and they took to Italian like a fish to water. Within six months they spoke perfectly. So I can attest to the fact that kids have an amazing ability to learn [00:12:00] foreign languages without, any help. But still, I can see why expats are looking for, international schools for that reason..

Anna: Nowadays, there are lots of international schools that are really, really good. I spoke with Charlotte, last week and she said that in Sardinia, near Cagliari, there's this international school, that has like a pool, yoga classes, like, I don't know, lots of different things, but she said that the costs were are like, I mean are okay.

Like compared to the

Luca: reasonable.

Anna: Yeah, they're reasonable.

Luca: No, that is absolutely true. I have friends in the, actually I have a funny story. I had a friend in Denmark. We worked at the same place. He had worked for Morgan Stanley in London, and he moved back to denmark on half the salary sending his three kids to private school or public school, as they call it in the UK, was so expensive that he was eating half his salary.

Anna: My God,[00:13:00]

Luca: oh yeah. I know people that pay 40, 50,000 pounds a year to send their children primary and secondary school. So

Anna: that's.

Luca: Italy, the costs, yeah, it's, it's crazy. In Italy, the costs for a private school, uh, between five, 10,000 euro a year at the very top, it is rare for things to be more expensive than that. So yeah, it's an attractive country for, for that reason too.

Anna: Ja.

Luca: Anyway, to sum it up. I think the takeaway from what we said is that if people are considering moving to a smaller Italian town that only has Italian state schools with children, the system is not perfect. It is not designed to mass produce prodigies, but is solid community-based a broadly. It works for everyone. I also wanna say that from March we are going to be updating all our town profiles on Magic Towns Italy, with the new [00:14:00] school performance metrics for standardized tests so people can actually look at which towns perform better and turn out better students for the future when choosing where to live.

Anna: Because at the end of the day, it's, it's not just about moving house, it's about choosing the environment your children will grow up in.

Luca: That's right. And many Italian towns may surprise you in a good way. Thank you, listeners for listening to us again, and we'll talk to you next week.