Letter from Rome: "The collapse of the Italian school system - our students are among the worst in Europe." Such was the main frontpage headline on a recent edition of the Turin daily, La Stampa. It was a headline that set me thinking.
The matter in question, of course, was the most recent version of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) triennial Programme For International Student Assessment (Pisa) report on education, a report that examined 57 countries - basically the EU states plus countries that ranged from the US and Japan to Thailand, Tunisia and Qatar. Italy did not fare well. In the Pisa 2006 science scale, Italy featured in the "statistically significantly below the OECD average" bracket, along with Portugal and Greece. (Ireland was ranked just inside the "statistically significantly above OECD average" bracket.)
To some of us, such negative conclusions about Italian education are unlikely to come as a surprise. Many years ago, tired of paying exorbitant international private school fees, we looked at a nearby liceo with a view to sending our daughter, Roisin, there. We arrived at the school at about 10.30 on a Thursday morning.
There seemed to be a lot of "movement" in the air. Kids were walking in and out of the main entrance door, others were sitting on the classroom window sills admiring the view, while others still were shouting out their "orders" to classmates, obviously headed to the nearest shop or pizzeria.
Inside the main concourse, there was even more "movement". There seemed to be a lot of students about, walking up and down the corridor. Classroom doors were, by and large, open. Some pupils were seated at their desks, apparently studying in the midst of the chaos around them. No teacher appeared to be actually teaching; rather, a number of them stood on the threshold of the classroom door, talking to their pupils.
We had intended to talk to the headmaster but we decided to leave that until after the "break", when classes proper would start up again. As we waited, we came across the headmaster's secretary, who just happened to have once been a student of my wife's at the British Institute in Rome. We would like to talk to the headmaster after the break, we said.
"What break? The students are in class now, or at least they are meant to be," she replied.
This might have been an extreme case. Clearly, all Italian schools are not like this. Clearly, there are little islands of academic excellence all over the Italian peninsula. Yet the basic reality, as confirmed by the last three Pisa reports, is that Italian state education leaves much to be desired (and not just at secondary level).
Disciplinary problems, a Byzantine and largely oral examination system, a maturità (Leaving Certificate) final examination that is passed by 95 per cent or more of pupils (in recent years, the pupils have been "examined" by their own teachers) and a grossly underpaid and consequently demoralised teaching staff are just some of the problems. For example, a senior secondary teacher, with 20 or more years of experience, can expect to earn between €1,500 and €2,000 a month after tax, or 20 per cent less than the OECD average ( Education at a Glance, OECD, September 2006). Nor does it much help that Italian schools still bear the stamp of major didactic reforms introduced in the 1930s, during the fascist regime of Mussolini.
In the midst of this gloom, however, there may be light. There was a time when the Pisa report would have passed unnoticed, rather than be flagged as the main story on the front page of a leading daily.
Remember, Italy is still a country where the concept of the "education supplement" has yet to take hold. (In contrast, Italian media are top heavy with supplements on cars, fashion and sport.)
For once, education was treated as a serious, weighty and newsworthy matter. Nor was La Stampaalone, with a variety of other publications and primetime radio programmes focusing on the problems of Italian education in the days after the release of the Pisa report. It was not always thus, as Giuseppe Ferrara, of educational publishing house Zanichelli, told La Stampa: "In Germany, the publication of the 2003 Pisa report was seen as a national problem and prompted a huge reaction both from the schools and from families. The result is that Germany has moved from 13th to 18th position. In the meantime, Italy has slipped nine places."
If the 2006 Pisa report prompts some serious reflection on methodology and didactics in Italy's arcane education system, so much the better, even if it is late in the day. Serious reflection would be a big improvement on government policies and rulings, which at best are often improvised and at worst are purely arbitrary.
For example, to declare, as the Berlusconi government did some years ago, that all children should learn English sounds praiseworthy. Yet such a serious initiative has to be set against the fact that there are not nearly enough properly trained primary and secondary school teachers of English.
Speaking to a parliamentary commission recently, education minister Giuseppe Fioroni expressed the hope that Italy might improve its teacher training, arguing that state funding on education has not always been well spent, saying: "It's a bit like what Luther said about the indulgences - there is no doubt but that he who is selling the indulgence is making money, but it is not nearly so certain if the buyer gets his place in paradise."