For the last week, it has been exam time in this household. The exams in question have been taken by 12-year-old Roisin and come within the ambit of the Italian national curriculum.
Given that Roisin attends an American international school (AOSR), where education is in English, the Italian curriculum is a weighty extra for her and that minority of her classmates who chose to follow it. In the international school context, Italian is little more than an intriguing optional course for the majority of children whose parents by and large form part of a transient community.
For Italian families, however, who represent the second biggest national grouping, with 26 per cent of the pupils as opposed to a 40 per cent US presence, the Italian programme is all too obviously an essential element in their children's education. So too it is for Roisin, who was born and has lived all her life in and around Rome.
Thus it was that for most of last week, at a time when the majority of classmates were already on holiday, we set out at earlier than dawn with Roisin so that she might sit prima media or end of first year middle school exams in Italian, mathematics, geography, history and English.
Thus it was, too, that your correspondent had the novel experience of sitting in on an oral exam last Saturday morning. Even if written exams now form a major element in Italian secondary and third-level education, the oral exam remains a key moment.
For example, of the 20-25 or more exams that an Italian university student might sit on the way to graduation, the vast majority are oral and are taken in front of an exam commission that looks intimidatingly like an interview board. Even the reformed Maturita, the Italian equivalent of the Leaving Certificate, which gets under way this morning still contains a final oral exam as well as three written tests.
To anyone educated in Ireland or Britain the idea of an oral exam as a test for anything other than fluency in the speaking of a foreign language can, at first glance, seem daft. Having watched Roisin and classmates go through the oral process last week, however, I would beg to differ.
Ireland and the Irish are justifiably very proud of their excellent education system. Yet, how many Irish 12-year-olds would perform well if, rather than having to write their history exam, they were asked to identify the major factors in the break-up of the medieval feudal system while sitting in front of a six-person commission of secondary school teachers?
Are not linguistic fluency, the ability to think on your feet, the ability to communicate effectively and directly with a group of people you have just met - are these not all skills likely to come in useful in the great battle of life? Is the ability to provide a convincing verbal answer not just as fundamental a part of education as the ability to provide a convincing written answer?
That, too, is to say nothing of the absurd situation whereby, in this age of the computer and Email, students of all levels have to sit hand-written exams? Who actually hand-writes anything these days other than Christmas card greetings? He/she who writes fastest and neatest becomes "laureatus". Terrific - if you are living in the age of the scrivener.
Another intriguing aspect of the Italian oral system is that parents, friends, relatives and classmates can sit in and watch. This is to ensure the regularity and legitimacy of the exam in a country where the phenomenon of cheating in written exams is not unknown. (On that latter front, by the way, a whole variety of technologically enhanced cheating systems - via mobiles and earphones - are allegedly expected to surface at this year's Maturita).
Having sat through Roisin's oral last Saturday morning and having been impressed by the patient but strict, formal but not intimidating attitude of the teachers, I was left with one familiar consideration. People who do this job (even if they get paid something extra for exams) for an insultingly low average monthly salary of between £700 and £1,000 after-tax, clearly have a strong sense of vocation.