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It’s chaotic or outdated.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 Die PISA-Rangliste ist eine internationale Rangliste für verschiedene Bildungsbereiche. Italiens 15-Jährige erreichen in Mathematik etwa den Durchschnitt. Etwa drei Viertel der Schüler [00:01:00] erreichen in allen Fächern ein solides Ausgangsniveau, und die schwächsten Werte liegen am oberen Ende.
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.
Man erfindet Dinge, man findet Dinge selbst heraus. Und ich glaube, das prägt dich auf eine gute Art und Weise. Und ich glaube, dass es sich, zumindest damals, wirklich sicher anfühlte.
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.
Und wie hast du die Schule in diesen verschiedenen Phasen empfunden, Anna?
Anna: Es kommt darauf an. Der Kindergarten war wunderbar. Wir hatten Englischunterricht, Kunst und diese Sache, bei der die älteren Kinder den jüngeren helfen. Es fühlte sich also wirklich nach Gemeinschaft an. Die Grundschule war [00:04:00] gut. Abgesehen von der grembiule, Ich habe es gehasst.
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: Gehst du auf eine religiöse Schule?
Anna: Nein,
Luca: Okay. We didn’t have a uniform in my state school. Maybe it was just your school that
Anna: wirklich?
Luca: Yes. Most schools don’t have a uniform.
Anna: Oh, nein, nein. Wir waren für.
Luca: um es Ihnen mitzuteilen.
Anna: Nein, nein. Wir waren gezwungen, diese Uniform anzulegen, aber
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.
Also, ja, in der High School kommt es sehr darauf an, in welcher Klasse man gelandet ist. Das spielt eine größere Rolle, als den Leuten bewusst ist. Aber es gab definitiv Raum für Kreativität. Also [00:05:00] um Halloween oder Karneval herum verkleiden sich die alten Schüler und wählen das beste Kostüm aus, manchmal gab es Workshop-Tage, an denen man, das war so.
Luca: süß.
Anna: Manchmal gab es Workshop-Tage, an denen man sich für Dinge wie Skateboarding, Graffiti, Fotografie oder Kunstunterricht anmelden konnte. Das war toll. Aber wahrscheinlich war das nur eine Ausnahme. Wahrscheinlich war es nur meine Schule.
Luca: Ich denke schon.
Anna: Nein. Oh, okay.
Luca: Nein, nein, nein. Ich denke, die meisten Schulen tun dies. Meiner Meinung nach tun sie es heute sogar mehr als früher.
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: Ja, ich weiß, es [00:06:00] ist ärgerlich. Und das ist eine, das ist eine Sache am italienischen System, dass es sehr faktenorientiert ist.
Anna: Ja, ja.
Luca: Daten, Namen und Gedichte nicht vergessen. Und, äh, es fühlt sich schwer an
Anna: Ja, ja.
Luca: Das passt zu manchen Menschen mehr als zu anderen, oder? Weißt du, dass es einige Leute in deiner Klasse gibt, die sich alles merken können?
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.
Unabhängig davon, ob es sich offiziell um eine Montessori-Schule handelt oder nicht, ist sie immer stark von der Philosophie des "Lernens durch Handeln" beeinflusst. Sie ist ab dem dritten Lebensjahr kostenlos. Und man bekommt eine Ganztagsbetreuung mit flexiblen Klassenzimmern, strukturierten Aktivitäten, und selbst wenn meine Freunde aus Nordeuropa kommen und sehen, wo mein jüngstes Kind zur Schule geht, sind sie wirklich beeindruckt [00:07:00] von dem 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.
Es kann sich also ziemlich schwer anfühlen, offen gesagt.
Anna: Ist es in den anderen Ländern anders?
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. Erstaunlich.
Luca: Wäre das einfach?
Anna: Yeah, I would’ve skipped like math or something like that.
Luca: Ja, und Geschichte. Und Geschichte.
Anna: Nun,
Luca: Sie haben drei Themen gefunden, die Sie bearbeiten müssen
Anna: no, no languages. Literature. Uh, no, history is important. Like really, it’s really
Luca: Ja, sicher.
Anna: It’s just,
Luca: wird es studieren.
Anna: Ja, aber es macht dich auch vielseitig, weißt du?
Luca: Das stimmt. Ja, das tut es. Es geht zurück auf das Überleben des Stärkeren. Eine Sache, die wirklich
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: wenn Sie der gleichen Meinung sind.
Anna: absolut 100%. In den mündlichen Prüfungen war ich viel besser.
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: Wie war sie denn so?
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 um bei den Nonnen zu lernen. Und du? Hast du das, 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, 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: Heutzutage gibt es viele internationale Schulen, die sehr, sehr gut sind. Ich habe letzte Woche mit Charlotte gesprochen, und sie sagte, dass auf Sardinien, in der Nähe von 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.
Wie im Vergleich zum
Luca: angemessen.
Anna: Yeah, they’re reasonable.
Luca: Nein, das ist absolut wahr. Ich habe Freunde in der, eigentlich habe ich eine lustige Geschichte. Ich hatte einen Freund in Dänemark. Wir arbeiteten am selben Ort. Er hatte für Morgan Stanley in London gearbeitet und zog mit der Hälfte seines Gehalts zurück nach Dänemark, wo er seine drei Kinder auf eine Privatschule oder eine öffentliche Schule, wie man sie im Vereinigten Königreich nennt, schickte, was so teuer war, dass er die Hälfte seines Gehalts aufbrauchte.
Anna: Mein Gott,[00:13:00]
Luca: Oh ja. Ich kenne Leute, die 40, 50.000 Pfund pro Jahr zahlen, um ihre Kinder in die Grund- und weiterführende Schule zu schicken. Also
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, ja.
Luca: Wie auch immer, um es zusammenzufassen. Ich denke, wir können aus dem Gesagten mitnehmen, dass das System nicht perfekt ist, wenn man erwägt, in eine kleinere italienische Stadt zu ziehen, in der es nur italienische staatliche Schulen mit Kindern gibt. Es ist nicht darauf ausgelegt, Wunderkinder in Massen zu produzieren, sondern es ist im Großen und Ganzen solide und gemeinschaftsorientiert. Es funktioniert für alle. Ich möchte auch sagen, dass wir ab März alle unsere Städteprofile auf Magic Towns Italien mit den neuen [00:14:00] Schulleistungsmetriken für standardisierte Tests aktualisieren werden, damit die Leute bei der Wahl ihres Wohnortes tatsächlich sehen können, welche Städte besser abschneiden und bessere Schüler für die Zukunft hervorbringen.
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.
English
French
German
Italian
Danish