To bring our young people closer to their European peers, who in many cases graduate at 18 instead of 19, earning a year for university studies or looking for a job, the experimentation of high schools and four-year technical institutes is extended instead of traditional five-year superiors. Starting from 2022/23, the experimentation of shortened study paths will increase tenfold (since its inception) and reach a thousand schools. The novelty is contained in the draft of a decree of the Ministry of Education sent to the CSPI, the technical consultative body of the dicastery of Viale Trastevere, for the customary opinion.
What the new Ministerial Decree provides
According to the draft of the Ministerial Decree, in fact, the Education will be able to authorize a thousand new experimental first classes, characterized by highly innovative paths and in line with the new guidelines set out by the NRP, as well as being shorter than one year. Along the lines of what is already happening in other countries, such as France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Portugal, the United Kingdom.
The four-year courses must guarantee the teaching of all the disciplines envisaged by the reference study course, including civic education, ecological transition, sustainable development, strengthening of the Stem disciplines, through didactic-organizational flexibility, including digital, and laboratory. All with a strong opening to the world of work, professional orders, universities and ITS. Technical institutes and high schools, authorized by the ministry, will be able to start from the school year 2022/23; professional institutes from 2023/24.
Previous
In Italy it is from Luigi Berlinguer that we talk about experimenting “shortened” paths, until 2017 when the idea was put into practice by Valeria Fedeli with the ok to the first 100 schools appointed to offer courses in 4 years, then extended, ‘next year, by another hundred. The new Regulatory Innovation Plan by Patrizio Bianchi provides for a public selection in which both state and equal can participate. These are not shortcuts and there will be no “discounts”: the study courses must in fact ensure that students achieve the specific learning objectives and skills envisaged, for the fifth year of the course, by the end of the fourth year. The provisions on state exams and the issue of final qualifications also remain valid.
How to participate in the project
Schools wishing to participate in the four-year experimentation must submit a project: the students, for which the abbreviation is requested, must have completed “a previous and regular” school course of eight years; there must be an enhancement of language learning (through the teaching of at least one non-linguistic discipline with the Clil methodology, starting from the third year of the course), more workshops and optional and personalized courses, and a remodeling of the annual school calendar and of the ‘weekly class schedule.