Since 2008, under the leadership of the new Director, the Fondazione Giovanni Agnelli has concentrated its research activities on Education (school, university, lifelong learning).
Such choice is based on the widely shared belief that a country’s economic welfare and social cohesiveness is based on the quality of its human capital above all.
A better educated population grants a higher level of productivity, hence a better place in the scale of global competition; furthermore education is one of the most powerful levers for an individual’s fulfilment as well as a very important channel of social mobility as it opens the way to socially relevant positions to the talented and motivated ones, irrespective of their background.
During the first stage, researches and resulting guidance policies will focus on school (primary and secondary) for two reasons.
First of all it has been proved how the learning process works on a gradual stratification basis: what is learnt during a certain stage of one’s life constitutes the basis for what will be learnt in the next stage. Hence a good school is essential for a good university as well as for a good lifelong learning.
Starting from the school does not mean to deny the importance of education’s further levels, it just means that it makes sense to work on the foundations before thinking on how to refurbish the upper floors.
More and more often International reports on schooling give worrying signals on the Italian system. Even though they do not classify it as a complete failure, which would be a simplification of the issue, they point out its seriously weak points.
In fact, even though according to those reports our primary school pupils seem to achieve flattering results, as soon as they start their secondary education cycle they suffer from a relevant linguistic, mathematic and scientific gap when compared to students of the same age in other OECD countries.
In view of the stratification-based character of the human capital education, such a delay might prove unrecoverable.
In a nutshell, school is now a serious national emergency and its general goals, as well as the way it works, have to be urgently revised.
There is also another reason for us to “start from school”. Apart from affecting most families on a daily basis as well as in the long run, school is a huge economic issue, taking up 7% of public funds, representing 3.5% of the GDP and employing 5% of the Italian working force.
With 9 millions of students and over one million and a hundred thousand staff (and this is only taking into account public schools) of which almost 900,000 are teachers (compared to 62,000 university teachers, researchers included), the school system is a big enough issue to have a relevant impact on all aspects of Italian society and economy.
