How many schools are there in Italy? How many teachers are there? What do students choose to study? These and other numerical curiosities are answered by the Ministry of Education, which recently published the focus “Main data of the school – Starting the school year 2021/2022”, containing a summary of the main data processed by the Information and Statistical Assets Management Office. The Skuola.net portal, analyzing it, has identified the 10 most significant “numbers”, those that give an overview of one of the most anticipated returns to the stalls ever.
1. How many Italian schools are there?
In Italy, currently, there are 129 Provincial Centers for Adult Education (CPIA) and 8,029 State educational institutions, which are divided into 348 Didactic Departments, 4,869 Comprehensive Institutes, 140 main secondary schools (the “middle schools”) and 2,672 Second cycle institutions (or “high schools”).
An interesting fact, which sees the progressive disappearance in particular of the Principal Institutes of the first degree, due mostly to the advancement of the Comprehensive Institutes, or those institutions that within them combine several degrees of education. Precisely because of the various amalgamations that have occurred over time, the schools of state schools amount to a total of 40,851.
The region richest in schools is Lombardy with 1,116 state educational institutions, followed by Campania (977) and Sicily (809). While the three regions with fewer structures are Molise (50), Basilicata (113) and Umbria (138).
2. How many independent schools are there?
Speaking of peer institutions – bearing in mind that the focus in this case shows the data relating to the school year 2020/2021 – these are certainly not negligible numbers. A year ago there were 12,202 peer schools and 814,390 students attending. With a particular concentration in the childcare segment: 8,634 peer institutions cover the needs of the age group between zero and six.
Here too, most of the structures are concentrated in Lombardy, in total 2,480. Followed by Campania (with 1,616) and Veneto (1,355 schools in total). Less representative is Valle d’Aosta (where there were only 17 peer institutions), Molise (32) and Basilicata (47).
3. How many students are there in state schools?
Limiting ourselves to the state school alone, in the school year 2021/2022, 368,656 classes were formed, which welcome 7,407,312 students, of which 277,840 with disabilities. The most numerous school groups are those attending secondary school, with 2,661,856 students. They are followed by the youngest children of primary school, as many as 2,313,923, and they conclude the three classes of the lower secondary school with 1,584,758 pupils.
4. How many pupils are there in private schools?
In the aforementioned peer schools (we are still talking about the 2020/2021 school year, but we can get a rough idea of these realities also for the current year) the students throughout Italy were 814,390, divided as follows: 470,294 school students of childhood (over 70%), 161,460 primary school pupils, 116,197 secondary school students and 66,439 lower secondary school students. As evidence of the indispensability of these entities in the Italian school system, especially for pupils up to six years of age.
5. In which regions are there the most students?
Leading the ranking of the regions with the most students, once again, is Lombardy, which in the year 2021/22 – between childhood, primary, first and second grade secondary – boasts 1,161,781 students in state schools. The region that comes immediately after is, once again, Campania with a student population made up of 834,721 students. In third place Lazio, with 714,658 children of school age who attend schools.
6. How many students will take the state exams?
Particular attention should be paid to those who will have to take the state exams in June 2022: how many children are there for graduation next summer? Well, 539,209 students will have to take the eighth grade exam. While 488,965 students will sit in front of the commissions of the Maturity 2022, net of failures and not admitted.
7. How many foreign students are there?
Thanks to the MI report it is also possible to find out the percentage of pupils with non-Italian citizenship present in the schools of the Peninsula: 798,291 students in total. But which are the regions in which multiculturalism is more pronounced? As expected, Lombardy once again ranks first with 25.7% of foreign students in kindergarten, first, first and second grade secondary schools. Emilia Romagna follows, with 12.3%, and Veneto, with 10.9%. While in Molise, Basilicata and Sardinia the lowest percentages are recorded, respectively 0.4%, 0.4% and 0.7%.
8. What are the most popular addresses?
The Lyceum is still the most popular institution among adolescent boys, with 51% of the votes. Technical and Professional follow, with 31.7% and 17.3% of choices respectively. Not really a surprise. But which are the addresses with the most subscribers?
Still considering state schools, children prefer science subjects, as 522,691 of them attend a technical institute in the technology sector. This is followed by the scientific high school, which still proves to be the preferred high school address for young people, with 366,719 students enrolled this year, followed by the technical institute in the economic sector with 320,535 students enrolled.
Fourth and fifth position for the scientific high school option applied sciences which collects the preferences of 210,220 students and the linguistic high school with 217,765 attending this year. Lastly, a special mention goes to the newly established professional institutes which, despite not having reached the fifth year of their creation, already have 326,253 young people among their ranks.
9. How many professors are there in Italy?
All these children were entrusted to about 684,317 teachers in state schools alone. A number that covers both the staff available to schools and the adaptation of the staff to actual situations, which occurs when there are deviations in the number of pupils enrolled compared to what was communicated for the establishment of the staff or in the case of particular situations (such as those that arise due to emergencies such as serious seismic events).
10. How many support teachers are there?
Finally, a look at the support teachers, or those specialized teachers who are assigned to classes where there is at least one disabled pupil, with the aim of promoting their inclusion. In 2021/2022 172,110 posts were assigned to support teachers, of which 65,940 are support posts by way of derogation, i.e. those additional posts that are granted at a later time upon request, if the professorships in the staff were not in fact sufficient to cover all certified cases present in schools.