Finishing middle school in Italy today is compulsory. Yet, in 2020 there were 50,000 kids between the ages of 20 and 24, born between 1996 and 2000, who didn’t have a middle school diploma. In detail: 10.6 thousand of them are illiterate, 15.8 thousand are literate but have never finished primary school, while another 23.3 thousand have never finished middle school.
This data was extrapolated for the first time in 2022 by the Infodata group of journalists (Il Sole 24 Ore) thanks to an extraction provided upon request by Istat.
Still among the 20-24 year olds in 2020, it was found that a further 17% have a middle school diploma but have not finished high school or have stopped at a three-year professional school diploma. The good news is that in the last ten years things have slowly improved: the percentage of twenty-year-olds without a diploma has dropped significantly, going from 23% to 17%, although overall it is still a rather high percentage.
If we zoom out to all age groups, we see that 4.6% of Italians over the age of 9 are illiterate, and that in general 4 out of 10 Italians aged 25 to 64 (therefore excluding the elderly) do not have a diploma . The INAPP Plus 2022 Report, which contains the results of a survey conducted on 45,000 people between the ages of 18 and 74, speaks of as many as 11.7 million Italians who have never enrolled in upper secondary school, who add nearly 4 million people who have stopped in their education without obtaining a diploma.
MIUR data
The PNRR (National Recovery and Resilience Plan) has put 1.5 billion euros on the plate for the Plan against early school leaving. The first 500 million will be used to finance projects in 3,198 schools with male and female students aged 12-18. These resources will be assigned directly to schools, based on precise indicators relating to dispersion and the socio-economic context.