The Attempts at Reform of Secondary Education in Italy

Abstract

With the reform of its lower-secondary school system (10-14 years of age) in 1962, Italy, together with Sweden, became a leader in Western Europe in matters of comprehensive re-organisation. At that time not even Great Britain, not to mention France and the German Federal Republic, had eliminated the traditional diversified system (with parallel tracks) characteristic of European schools. This characteristic also differentiated European schools from the American high school and the Soviet 10year general school. Beginning in 1966, this reform led to an increase in the numbers of students entering the upper-secondary schools. Obviously, they entered schools that were unchanged, planned coherently for the previous system, but unsuitable for the new students who were socially and culturally very different. The problem of reform in the secondary system could not be overlooked. By the late 1960s, however, no official reform of the secondary school system had taken place. Nevertheless, the rapid increase in the number of students in practice meant a revolution for the secondary schools. The rate of increase for 14-18 year old students between 1951 and 1972 needs no comment: in 1951, 9.3% of middle school students entered upper-secondary schools, in 1961, 18.5% and in 1972, 43.1%. In absolute terms, for the 1952/3 school year, 460,000 middle school students entered secondary schools, whereas for the 1972/3 school year 1,820,000 students entered secondary schools (the numbers of pupils in the middle schools rose over the same period from 923,000 to 2,421,000). In spite of the absence of a comprehensive reform, three important legislative provisions relating to the secondary school system were approved in the late 1960s: the decree of 15 February 1969 concerning the school-leaving examinations; law no. 754 (1969) concerning experimental changes in vocational schools; and law no. 910 (1969) concerning access to all university faculties for those who had obtained a diploma from a five-year secondary course, regardless of the type of school attended. This latter provision, establishing equality with the 'liceo' diploma as regards access to further education, already inherent in the creation of more socially and culturally integrated schools, was the main guiding principle of the reform. The system remained pluralistic, although at least there was an effort to replace the traditional hierarchical range of options with a set of equivalent choices. The provision concerning vocational schools was also interesting. These establishments, previously two-year and more often three-year, became five-year courses; the intention was to experiment with a kind of'inverted curriculum', that is, to proceed from the concrete to the abstract. This was considered to be better way of raising the scholastic standard