Ministry of Education: 400 million euros for schools open in the summer

A step forward for schools open in the summer. The Minister of Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara, signed the decree which allocates 400 million euros to finance «inclusion, social activities and skills enhancement activities for the period of summer suspension of lessons». The measure, says the Ministry's note, concerns the school years 2023/24 and 2024/25, therefore the current one and the following one, and is intended for primary and secondary schools. The projects are activated based on the proposals of the schools. The funds would cover 1.714 million additional hours of activity for a number of students between 800 thousand and 1.3 million (in this school year there are 7,194,400 students in state schools from nursery to high school).

The audience of recipients and the duration of the courses can be further expanded by schools thanks to agreements with local authorities, universities, voluntary and third sector organisations, sports associations and families themselvesfollowing the example of best practices already developed based on school autonomy.

Teachers who decide to join the projects on a voluntary basis may be remunerated within the limits of the resources available for the activated teaching modules. Schools will be able, in addition to the 400 million allocated, to use additional funds for summer projects, drawing on the 750 million PNRR of combating school dropout and overcoming territorial gaps and the 600 million PNRR for actions to strengthen STEM skills.

The objective is to find a solution to a problem that affects millions of families: the long summer school break which no longer fits with parents' working hours and which forces many to spend on summer camps and alternative activities for children. boys from mid-June to mid-September. There are petitions, like the one from WeWorld Onlus and Mums of Shit, who ask for a change to the entire school calendar with only a stop in the months of July and August, which in any case are not covered by holidays for many parents, and other breaks during the school year. On the other hand, the already high workload of teachers and the tiredness of children already in June are recalled and the structural deficiencies of Italian schools unsuitable for hosting pupils in the summer are denounced.

Greta Nicolini of WeWorld, an organization that for fifty years has been working to bring those on the margins to the center in over 25 countries, explains: «School is certainly not a parking lot, but it is one of the founding institutions of our society, in which children, girls and adolescents receive an education that is not limited to notions, but also opens up to cultural, sporting, social and relational experiences. The interruption of school for three months, together with the blocking of all extra-curricular activities, for many of them leads to the absence of social stimuli and relationships. Participation in leisure centers depends not only on the offer in the area, but also on the socioeconomic possibilities and educational level of the families. Several studies show that months of skills acquired during the year are lost, and this is especially true for students who come from less wealthy and educated families. For them, time at school is even more precious.”