(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor Plus) – Milan, 16 Feb – With the aim of not wasting any resources destined for the South, the Ministry for the South, together with the Ministry for Education, will invest 87 million euros in a task force of administrative, legal, accounting, engineers and architects experts to support the municipalities, metropolitan cities, provinces and educational institutions of the South in participating in tenders for schools. These experts will have to support local authorities in the execution and implementation of school building interventions, as well as the institutes themselves in projects to reduce territorial gaps, enhancement and development of skills, including digital ones. Tenders for school buildings have a total value of over 2.5 billion euros from cohesion policy. As for the nursery schools, the investment is 1 billion and 300 million euros. One hundred and thirty million will be invested for interventions on gyms and canteens, while to counter the phenomenon of depopulation, Inail has made available 40 million euros for the construction of innovative schools in southern municipalities with a population of less than 5,000 inhabitants. This is a demanding challenge, which requires an important planning commitment on the part of local administrations. The risk is that these resources are not properly spent, or worse, lost. To avoid this scenario, a task force of 193 experts will support local authorities until 2026, for an expenditure of 70 million over 5 years. To the funds coming from cohesion there are also those coming from the NRP to combat early school leaving and educational poverty in the southern regions. The goal is to reach at least 20,000 minors in situations of distress or at risk of deviance by June 2023 and at least 44,000 by June 2026
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