Now that the third financial law of the Meloni government has been
approved, the regime's school is starting to take shape. Thegovernment's intervention moves along two main axes: the strengthening
of private school funding and the reform of primary school programs. As
for the first point, namely the circumvention of the constitutional ban
in Article 33 of the Constitution that prohibits funding for private
schools, the government is simply following in the wake of the wicked
policy inaugurated by Law 62 of 2000 that bears the name of Luigi
Berlinguer and is the result of the compromising policies of the
center-left that prostituted itself to the Catholic component, hoping to
gain admission into the control room and finally be legitimized to take
power.
Parity schools
Today, private schools operating in Italy that have requested and
obtained parity are defined as "parity schools", they are approximately
24% of the total, with over 10% of students (data from 2021-2022),
12,096 schools (of which 8,529 are nursery schools) are attended by
817,413 students, of which more than half (466,037) are enrolled in
nursery school. Looking at the distribution of parity schools by school
level in relation to the regions in which they are located and taking
into account the number of students, we note that to the 466,037
students who attend the school managed by private bodies (including
religious denominations), we must add the 821,970 students of the parity
schools managed by the Municipalities. Other data are indicative with
respect to private schools as a whole and refer to the number of
teachers (24,490, of which 1,932 are support teachers) and the number of
students with disabilities (4,215, 1.4% compared to 2% of state schools).
In addition to the funding measures stratified in the previous
legislature, the 2024 financial law provides that "Starting from the
2025 financial year, families with an ISEE income not exceeding
EUR40,000.00 are granted a voucher, spendable exclusively at a private
school, for a maximum annual amount of EUR1,500 for each student
attending a private primary school, lower secondary school or the first
two years of a second-grade private school", "The actual amount of the
voucher for each student is calculated on the basis of brackets
inversely proportional to the ISEE income and within the limits of an
overall funding of EUR65 million per year. In the budget forecast of the
Ministry of Education and Merit, a fund dedicated to the interventions
of this paragraph is established, equal to 16.25 million for the year
2025, 65 million for the year 2026, 65 million for the year 2027", and
this "in order to ensure the right of children, regardless of income, to
study in private schools", as declared by the Minister of Education and
Merit. The provision cited is not immediately enforceable; for it to be
so, the issuance of a specific ministerial decree will be necessary. It
should also be noted that paragraphs 570 to 571 of the aforementioned
Financial Law provide for an increase in the contribution referred to in
Article 1-quinquies, paragraph 1, of Legislative Decree no. 42 of 2016,
assigned to private schools that welcome students with disabilities,
increased by 50 million euros for the year 2025 and by 10 million euros
per year starting from the year 2026.
Overall in the last decade, even with governments of the Center and
Left, there has been a significant increase in public funding to support
private schools. In 2012, state funding for private schools was 286
million. Five years later, in 2017, the Budget had almost doubled;
today, it exceeds 600 million euros. Most of the funding is provided to
primary schools (infant schools). Families still pay a fee and this
allows supporters of state funding for private schools to claim that
those who choose a private school are discriminated against because they
should not have to pay anything, as they have already paid taxes for
public services, or at least they should be able to deduct the expenses
incurred for the school service from their taxes.
Law no. 107 of July 2015 (the so-called "Good School" law) moves in this
direction, which provides for the deduction from personal taxes of
education expenses, up to a maximum of 800 per child, with 152 returned
per year for each child, and allows this deduction for those who send
their children to a private school.
Furthermore, law 32 of 2022, known as the Family Act, provides for the
possibility of deducting the costs incurred for children's schooling
only in the first 6 years of life, rightly reserving significant aid
through the single allowance for families with children with disabilities.
In a context of general increase in funding for non-state education in
2020, private schools had received 150 million euros in PNRR funds from
the government. With the demographic crisis affecting the country and
the general decline in pupils, many institutions are at risk of closure
and therefore the recently approved Financial Law provides that "To deal
with the progressive closure, in the last decade, of an increasing
number of private nursery schools and private primary and secondary
schools, as well as to guarantee and protect the freedom of educational
choice established by Article 30 of the Constitution, the contribution
referred to in Article 1, paragraph 13, of Law 2000, no. 62 is increased
by 100 million euros for the year 2025". In this way, Article 30 of the
Constitution, which protects the freedom of families to educate their
children, is used to once again circumvent the constitutional ban on
funding private schools. New measures in favor of private schools were
expected in the context of the implementation of differentiated
autonomy, introducing which a possible legislative intervention of the
regions in favor of private schools was foreseen, confirming the
tendencies already manifested in the past to finance nursery schools. It
is no coincidence that the regions had asked for the competence in
school matters to be included among the subjects to be transferred.
However, the Constitutional Court with Sentence 192/2024) of 14/11/2024
has detected significant problems of unconstitutionality in Law
26/06/2024, n. 86 (Provisions for the implementation of the
differentiated autonomy of the Regions with ordinary statutes), approved
by Parliament and in particular with regard to the competences in
education matters, has established that only individual functions can be
transferred, rather than the general competence on the matter,
considering that the national education system must be unitary. This
decision has put a brake on the expansion of regional competence in this
matter also because the debate is underway regarding the possibility of
submitting the entire law on differentiated autonomy to a constitutional
referendum.
The reform of the programs
On the initiative of one of the most ignorant ministers, of what is now
called the Ministry of Education of Merit, who distinguished himself for
his stupidities regarding the humiliation of the student as a means of
education, the reform that should give substance to the regime's school
was prepared. For now, it is a bill presented to the Council of
Ministers on January 14, which finds its place within Mission 4 of the
National Recovery and Resilience Plan and aims to reorganize the Italian
school system. Having declared war, in the introduction, on educational
obsolescence, the proposal is to develop digital skills and critical
thinking, pursued through a return to tradition, with an approach that
is in words "interdisciplinary and practical". For example, "mathematics
will include references to artificial intelligence and statistics; civic
education, restructured, will take on a central role, going well beyond
the notions of constitutional law". The study of languages will be
promoted, privileging oral communication and, in words, multicultural
interaction: if we look in concrete terms, we then find differentiated
classes for foreigners or for students who have linguistic difficulties.
The flagship of this new school is the introduction of practical
laboratories in all education cycles to invest in technology, multimedia
classrooms and anything else regarding equipment, while no salary
increase is foreseen for teachers, the worst paid in Europe, if we
exclude the bonus measures that concern the assignment of specific
temporary assignments. For students of professional schools, under the
slogan of greater integration with the world of work, compulsory and
free internships and traineeships in companies are planned, which will
in fact extend the infamous school-work relationship, wanted by the
Renzi government, to the full advantage of entrepreneurs, who are
provided with free labor, moreover not trained in relation to the
dangers related to accidents at work and which has seen many students
die at work. In order to have a financing fund that can be used as
needed for the many customers, the "national fund for inclusion" will be
strengthened, which will finance at the discretion of the minister,
targeted interventions to support schools in the most disadvantaged
areas, strengthening infrastructure. This fund will not be limited to
material interventions, but will also finance refresher courses for
teachers.
As for the programs, the geohistory wanted by Gelmini will be abolished,
the teaching of history will be restructured, "privileging that
homeland, from the Stone Age to today, genuinely Italian," forgetting
the references to interdisciplinarity, stated in the introduction and
that history, for the study of the complexity of the world and society,
would require a comparative study of what happens in the different areas
of the world, since civilizations interact and do not have autonomous
developments and histories.
There are however other pearls, which range from the field of teaching,
in which the study by heart of nursery rhymes and poems is used, to then
move on, in the second year of middle school, to the possible optional
study of Latin. The pinnacle of "cultural excellence" is however reached
by introducing the study of the Bible from elementary school, mimicking
the American religious fundamentalists, probably in an attempt to begin
introducing the creationist theory within the school, with the intent of
fighting its secularism, trying to convince students that the world was
created by God, rather than being born from the evolution of unicellular
organisms and as a result of biochemical transformations of the environment.
The need to put Darwin and evolution in the attic, and receive the
neo-communist cultural message, has caused the Minister, who is also
known for supporting insane theses about the causes that led to the fall
of the Roman Empire, to overlook that as everyone knows, the Bible has
never played a central role in the development of Italian culture,
because rather this role was played by reference to the Gospels; to
study it requires having a basic cultural knowledge that allows a
critical reading of the text, a skill that is certainly not acquired in
the first cycle of studies, otherwise doing a study that can only be
mnemonic and apologetic. But we know in history the minister is
ignorant! He is also ignorant in the matter of cultural hegemony that he
believes is conquered with the exercise of power and not instead with
the cultural comparison between different ideas and opinions, organizing
and managing the debate and the comparison between the different
cultural actors who by virtue of their ideas and opinions manage to
channel knowledge towards a collective social growth.
In short, a reform against which we must fight.
G.L.
https://www.ucadi.org/2025/01/25/facciamo-la-tara-a-valditara/
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