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It’s chaotic or outdated.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 Les classements PISA sont des classements internationaux de différents types d'éducation. Les jeunes Italiens de 15 ans obtiennent des résultats autour de la moyenne en mathématiques, un peu au-dessus de la moyenne en lecture et un peu en dessous en sciences. Environ trois quarts des élèves [00:01:00] atteignent un niveau de base solide dans toutes les matières, et c'est dans le haut de l'échelle que les résultats sont les plus faibles.
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.
Vous inventez des choses, vous, vous trouvez des choses par vous-même. Et je pense que cela vous façonne dans le bon sens. Et je pense que, du moins à l'époque, on se sentait vraiment en sécurité.
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.
Et comment avez-vous ressenti l'école à ces différentes étapes, Anna ?
Anna : Cela dépend. L'école maternelle était merveilleuse. Nous avions des cours d'anglais, d'art et un système où les enfants plus âgés aidaient les plus jeunes. On sentait vraiment que c'était la communauté qui menait la danse. L'école primaire était [00:04:00] bien. À part les grembiule, Je l'ai détesté.
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 : Vous fréquentez une école religieuse ?
Anna : Non,
Luca : Okay. We didn’t have a uniform in my state school. Maybe it was just your school that
Anna : vraiment ?
Luca : Yes. Most schools don’t have a uniform.
Anna : Oh, non, non. Nous étions pour.
Luca : de vous l'annoncer.
Anna : Non, non. Nous avons été contraints de porter cet uniforme, mais
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.
Alors oui, le lycée, ça dépend beaucoup de la classe dans laquelle on se retrouve. Cela a plus d'importance que les gens ne le pensent. Mais il y avait vraiment de la place pour la créativité. Donc [00:05:00] autour d'Halloween ou du Carnaval, la vieille école se déguise et ils choisissent le meilleur costume, parfois il y avait des jours d'atelier où vous pouviez, il y avait tellement.
Luca : doux.
Anna : Parfois, il y avait des journées d'atelier où l'on pouvait s'inscrire à des cours de skateboard, de graffiti, de photographie ou d'art. C'était génial. Mais c'était probablement une exception. C'était probablement juste mon école.
Luca : Je pense que c'est le cas.
Anna : Non. Oh, d'accord.
Luca : Non, non, non. Je pense que la plupart des écoles le font. En fait, elles le font davantage aujourd'hui qu'à l'époque, à mon avis.
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 : Oui.
Luca : Oui, je sais que c'est [00:06:00] ennuyeux. Et c'est l'une des caractéristiques du système italien, c'est qu'il est très axé sur les faits.
Anna : Oui, c'est vrai.
Luca : dates, se souvenir des noms, se souvenir des poèmes. Et, euh, c'est lourd
Anna : Oui, c'est vrai.
Luca : Cela convient à certaines personnes plus qu'à d'autres, n'est-ce pas ? Tu sais qu'il y a des gens dans ta classe qui se souviennent de tout ?
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.
Qu'elle soit officiellement Montessori ou non, elle est toujours fortement influencée par la philosophie du monde "apprendre en faisant". L'enseignement est gratuit à partir de l'âge de trois ans. Même lorsque mes amis d'Europe du Nord viennent voir où mon plus jeune enfant va à l'école, ils sont vraiment impressionnés [00:07:00] par le jardin d'enfants.
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.
Cela peut donc sembler assez lourd, franchement.
Anna : La situation est-elle différente dans les autres pays ?
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. Incroyable.
Luca : C'est facile ?
Anna : Yeah, I would’ve skipped like math or something like that.
Luca : Oui, c'est vrai. Et l'histoire.
Anna : Bien,
Luca : vous avez trouvé trois sujets à traiter
Anna : no, no languages. Literature. Uh, no, history is important. Like really, it’s really
Luca : Bien sûr.
Anna : It’s just,
Luca : l'étudiera.
Anna : Oui, mais cela vous permet d'être bien équilibré, vous savez ?
Luca : Oui, c'est vrai. Oui, c'est ce qu'il fait. C'est un peu comme la survie du plus fort. Une chose qui est vraiment
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 : Oui, c'est vrai,
Luca : si vous êtes du même avis.
Anna : absolument 100%. J'étais bien meilleur lors des examens oraux.
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 : Comment était-elle ?
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 pour étudier avec les nonnes. L'avez-vous fait ? 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 : Oui, c'est vrai.
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 : De nos jours, il y a beaucoup d'écoles internationales qui sont vraiment, vraiment bonnes. J'ai parlé avec Charlotte la semaine dernière et elle m'a dit qu'en Sardaigne, près de 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.
Comme par rapport à la
Luca : raisonnable.
Anna : Yeah, they’re reasonable.
Luca : Non, c'est tout à fait vrai. J'ai des amis au Danemark, en fait j'ai une histoire amusante. J'avais un ami au Danemark. Nous travaillions au même endroit. Il avait travaillé pour Morgan Stanley à Londres, et il est revenu au Danemark avec la moitié de son salaire. Il envoyait ses trois enfants dans des écoles privées ou publiques, comme on dit au Royaume-Uni, qui étaient si chères qu'il mangeait la moitié de son salaire.
Anna : Mon Dieu, [00:13:00]
Luca : oh oui. Je connais des gens qui paient 40 ou 50 000 livres par an pour envoyer leurs enfants à l'école primaire et secondaire. C'est ainsi que
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 : Oui, c'est vrai.
Luca : Bref, pour résumer. Je pense que ce qu'il faut retenir de ce que nous avons dit, c'est que si des personnes envisagent de s'installer dans une petite ville italienne où il n'y a que des écoles publiques italiennes avec des enfants, le système n'est pas parfait. Il n'est pas conçu pour produire en masse des prodiges, mais il est solidement ancré dans la communauté. Il fonctionne pour tout le monde. Je tiens également à préciser qu'à partir du mois de mars, nous mettrons à jour tous nos profils de villes sur Magic Towns Italie, avec les nouveaux [00:14:00] indicateurs de performance des écoles pour les tests standardisés, afin que les gens puissent voir quelles villes sont les plus performantes et produisent les meilleurs élèves pour l'avenir lorsqu'ils choisissent leur lieu de résidence.
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.
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