Shock to the system
Budget cuts and reforms in Italian education have unleashed a wave of protests.
John Hooper, Guardian, 21 Oct 2008. Retrieved 9 Dec 2008 from http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/oct/21/schools-italy
'This is a very strange protest," mused Teresa Bencetti in a cafe round the corner from the Victor Hugo Girolami state elementary school in Rome. Nobody was proposing to take away her job teaching maths and English, she said. Nobody was proposing to cut her pay which, after tax, left her with around €14,400 (£11,200) a year. But Silvio Berlusconi's rightwing government is proposing to deliver a shock to Italy's troubled education system, and Bencetti and many of her colleagues fear it will do it much more harm than good.
Last week university students and lecturers joined for the first time in a growing wave of protests against cuts and reforms imposed by Berlusconi's young education minister, Mariastella Gelmini. Critics argue they will set back the clock 30 years or more in schools. Following sit-ins and marches, the main trade union federations have called for a one-day general education strike on October 30.
A lot is at stake. Economists agree that a key reason why Italy has become the EU's laggard in the past 10 years or so is that its educational system has failed to adapt sufficiently to the demands of a knowledge-based society…
The Victor Hugo Girolami is in the Monteverdi Nuovo district, which Paola Pandolfi, another of the teachers, describes as "upper middle-class". Yet the school has no broadband and a dozen computers between 500 children. Money ought not to be a problem. The homeland of Maria Montessori spends more on its six- to 11-year-olds than the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development average. Cash gets a bit tighter in secondary education. But even there the average spending per student is £4,420, only fractionally below the OECD average.
The nub of the issue is that the available resources are spent badly - or, rather, unproductively. About 97% of Italy's education budget is gobbled up by pay. Yet the teachers are not particularly well rewarded. In primary education, they get 78% of the OECD average (though they also work shorter hours: a basic 24 per week). The problem is that there are so many of them. Italy is a country of short teaching weeks, long school days and small classes, often in tiny schools.
International comparisons
Its primary education, nevertheless, does well in international comparisons. An OECD report published last month put Italy between fifth and eighth on various criteria in a ranking of 30 of the world's richest nations. The trouble begins at the secondary level. The performance of Italian teenagers in successive PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) tests has been dismal. In the last one, in 2006, they performed worse than their counterparts in Spain, France, Germany, the UK and the US (though with vast differences in achievement between Italy's richer north and the poorer south).
Recent years have also seen hideous incidents of bullying, and of violence against and molestation of teachers by pupils. These, as much as anything, have led to talk of an "educational emergency".
Gelmini, the daughter of a primary school teacher, came into office in April…to tackle it. But, at a time when Italy is struggling to stay within the budget limits imposed by its membership of the euro, she is also under instructions to stay within a tighter budget. The challenge she faces is thus unusually stiff - to improve quality and discipline while slashing costs…
…The bulk of the cuts were aimed at the elementary schools that make up the one part of the system that is successful (universities are even more of a headache than schools). A lot of small schools are to be closed - 260 just in Lazio, the region around Rome. About 87,000 teaching posts and 45,000 support jobs are to be axed.
The government stresses that no one will be thrown out of work. The savings are to be made over the next three academic years by not filling vacancies. That is scant consolation, though, to tens of thousands of precari - young freelance teachers whose hopes of a career in education have been put off until 2012 and, in most cases, dashed forever. Among criticisms of the government's policy is that it has cut off the flow of new blood into teaching.
At present, parents of primary school pupils have a choice. They can enrol their children for five mornings and two afternoons a week, in which case the children will be expected to do more homework. Or they can put them down for 40 hours. "Full time", as it is known, is popular with parents who both work. The Gelmini reform sweeps away both systems and replaces them with a 24-hour week.
But the change that has excited most controversy - though not most debate because it was rammed through parliament with the Italian equivalent of a "guillotine" motion - is the reintroduction of a system of "one class, one teacher" in elementary schools like the Victor Hugo Girolami. Even some of Berlusconi's allies…balked at this when it was unveiled.
Pandolfi, who has been giving art classes and Italian lessons, now faces the daunting prospect of teaching a whole class the entire range of subjects, including some of which she has no real grasp. "This was a system that existed 30 years ago," she said. "Nowadays, the subjects we teach are more complex. They're weightier. It will take an immense range of knowledge to impart them all properly."
The return of the single teacher is just one element in what the shadow education minister, Maria Pia Garavaglia, scathingly calls "Operation Nostalgia". Just as many Italians look back fondly at the 1950s and 60s, as a golden age of economic growth and political stability, so they have a tendency to see the schools of the past as a solution to the troubles of the present.
Marks for conduct
Gelmini clearly shares that view. She has reintroduced marks for conduct, which were abolished 10 years ago. She is considering the reintroduction of uniforms. And she has urged headteachers to promote the wearing of smocks, which had seemed doomed to disappear, as they have from other west European nations, except for use in art classes. Pandolfi is concerned that whatever benefits these measures bring will be offset by the abolition of full-time teaching in the primary schools. "In the borgate [poor suburbs], 'full time' serves to take kids off the streets," she said.
[In spite of the protests, it seems that] Gelmini is building a bedrock of support from which she can demand greater resources for the more challenging task of reforming secondary education. A poll last month found she was the most popular member of the cabinet, with an approval rating of 66%. But the risk is that, with Italy once again heading back into a recession that will strain its public finances, the treasury will slam shut the coffers once the cuts have taken effect.
Giacomo Vaciago, professor of political economy at the Catholic University of Milan and one of Italy's leading authorities on education, is a stringent critic of the current system. But he fears the government's approach is "naive and conservative". "The idea seems to be that if we go back to the old ways we will get the old quality - an assumption that is ingenuous. Quality is something you don't easily get with just smocks and discipline."
Vocabulary Exercises:
Match the verbs with the expressions that follow them (perhaps there is more than one that fits)
1. to axe thrown out of work
2. to be more harm than good
3. to be a vacancy
4. to be back the clock
5. to be sth away
6. to dash within a tight budget
7. to do at stake
8. to face shut the coffers
9. to face a plan
10. to fail costs
11. to fill (a problem)
12. to set offset by
13. to slam a daunting prospect
14. to slash to do sth
15. to stay jobs
16. to sweep sb’s hopes
17. to tackle a stiff challenge
18. to unveil doomed to (failure, death, disaster, etc.)
Now match these definitions with the above expressions:
a. to find new workers for jobs that are free
b. to eliminate jobs
c. to have to take care of a very difficult problem (x2)
d. not to spend very much money
e. to take sth completely away
f. to go back in time
g. to cause damage, and not to help very much
h. to stop giving money
i. to publicly present a new idea/scheme
j. to leave a person without hope
k. to be destined to a bad future
l. to reduce costs greatly
m. not to do sth.
n. to be facing possible harm/elimination if the wrong choices are made
Some interesting vocabulary
the approval rating of an elected official – how popular the official is, according to opinion polls
an approach to sth – a way of looking at or dealing with sth
one’s counterpart – a person who has the same job or position, but in another place/organization
a critic – a person who criticizes
a trade union – an organization of workers to defend workers’ rights
a strike /to strike – when workers refuse to work in order to achieve a goal
a sit-in / to sit in – when students sit in a space and refuse to leave it, as a way of protest
to enrol in – to register for
a wave of protests – a series of protests
Answer all the questions according to what is written in the article, but without copying phrases from the text.
True or False Questions: Write “true” or “false” next to each statement. If it is false, you must explain why.
_____1. Italy’s education system needs reforms, because its students do worse than most EU students on standardized tests.
_____2. University students have not protested, because the reforms don’t affect them.
_____3. Victor Hugo Girolami is a primary school teacher in Rome.
_____4. The primary level is so basic that it’s not difficult for one teacher to teach all the subjects that his/her primary students need to learn.
_____5. Discipline is not a very big problem at schools.
_____6. One problem is a lack of resources, as schools do not get enough money to buy the equipment they need.
_____7. In order to save money, the government is going to dismiss about 87,000 teachers.
_____8. “The shadow education minister” is a member of the opposition party.
_____9. Gelmini is extremely unpopular, as indicated by the strikes that have taken place.
____10. Prof. Vaciago defends the current school system, and attacks Gelmini’s reforms.
Short Answer: Answer each question in sentences or in clear note form.
11. Name 5 reforms related with primary schools put forward by Gelmini.
- reduce time, one teacher for all subjects, close schools, conduct marks, wear smocks
12. Some people accuse Gelmini of believing that the old ways are better than the current ways of running education matters. Name two people who believe this.