Champorcher, kindergarten closes: only one child enrolled

Of the seven today, one will go to Donnas and 5 finish the cycle. Demographic crisis, the mayor: “A temporary stop”

CHAMPORCHER. The growing denatality affects the destinies of the small mountain schools. A phenomenon that in turn affects the smaller municipalities that suffer from the problem of increasingly empty cribs, with inevitable impacts on the maintenance of services. Starting right from the school ones. This time to suffer the consequences is the kindergarten in Champorcher which will not open next September due to lack of adhesions: only one child has enrolled.

The data emerged in recent days during the presentation of the study “Structure and demographic dynamics of the Aosta Valley” edited by the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan, and confirmed by the regional councilor for education, Luciano Caveri.

“Unfortunately, this is not new; we are struggling to keep the schools of the small Aosta Valley communities open, after all, since 2011 to date, births have been halved in various municipalities – said Caveri -. Now the reasoning that we will have to do concerns precisely how to repopulate these Municipalities, as well as establishing the need for teachers who in the future can become a job at risk ».

And also the mayor of Champorcher Alice Savin, can only take note of the harsh law of numbers: “Today the pupils of our nursery are seven but five will enter first grade in September, one will attend Donnas and therefore only one member would remain – he explains Chanoux -. In the future we will see what will happen, I just want to underline that this is not a definitive closure but that the school will be reactivated as soon as the numbers allow it “.

A situation that Perloz experienced in this school: the public kindergarten did not have the numbers to open last September and the Municipality had intervened by starting an experimental Montessori self-organization project “Children in the Valley” to allow children to attend school. asylum in their country. The minimum numbers for the 22/23 school year are guaranteed and the nursery can reopen.

Returning to the survey conducted by the Milanese university, the general picture on the birth rate and the aging of the population in the Valley is not comforting: if in 2011 compared to 54 people out of 100 aged over 65 there were 46 aged between 15 and 64 , only after ten years this ratio has changed to 59 against 41. An aging aggravated also by the reduction of the total population back to the levels of 2006 (just over 123 thousand residents), observed for most of the territorial areas and especially in the non-tourist high mountain area, where the percentage of residents over 65 is equal to 26.8 per cent.

The detailed analysis by age group of minors residing in Valle d’Aosta then highlighted a progressive impoverishment of the youth population. In the last decade, just over a thousand residents under the age of 18 have been lost, with more substantial decreases in the incidence of preschool children.