The Diritti a Scuola project works to cut dropout rates in certain schools in Puglia, Italy to below 10 %, while increasing inclusion and employability, particularly of youngsters with learning difficulties or from disadvantaged backgrounds. It strengthens education in basic subjects – linguistics and science at primary level and Italian language and mathematics at secondary level – so as to improve learning processes and key skills, and provides students and their families with counselling, educational guidance and intercultural mediation.
- 29 March 2018
Diritti a Scuola envisages interventions to improve the school system and prevent dropout, thus favouring success in school. In addition to this, the positive effect on social inclusion is mainly related to the creation of the help desk.
Strategies under Diritti a Scuola include increasing the amount of time pupils spend at school and developing customised teaching approaches to address their weaknesses. Lessons are tailored to students’ needs in order to motivate them. A higher teacher-to-pupil ratio, achieved by hiring temporary staff, is key to the improvements.
Other elements are the introduction of cultural mediators and psychological counsellors and creation of a help desk to improve access to vocational training and increase employability among both students and their families.
Help for temporary teachers
The project fosters close working relationships between permanent and temporary teachers by fully involving temporary staff in weekly planning of activities and the allocation of students to different groups based on learning ability. Furthermore, it gives temporary teachers a performance score and, based on this, a position in the provincial teaching rankings, which can help them get a permanent job – the first time this has been tried in Italy. Permanent and temporary administrative, technical and auxiliary staff have also benefited.
An additional innovative aspect includes the development of an integrated approach to social inclusion, which takes account of all the main barriers to inclusion facing disadvantaged students, such as learning, cultural, social and economic problems.
Benefits for schools, pupils and families
By 2011, two years after the launch of Diritti a Scuola, dropout rates had fallen to 19.5 %, down from 30.3 % in 2004, while significant improvements in a range of areas were observed across Puglia. The percentage of 15-year-olds with limited reading abilities had been reduced to 16.7 % in 2012, in line with national aims to get this figure to below 20 %, while numbers of 15-year-olds with high reading levels grew from 4.2 % in 2009 to 6.1 % in 2012, close to the national average of 6.7 %.
As well as being beneficial for students’ skills, the project has generated wider positive impacts in schools. It has helped to improve teaching and classroom organisation, and strengthened relationships both among teachers and between teachers and students. It has also boosted students’ motivation, which is the basis for developing skills and changing attitudes to school attendance.
Some of the biggest impacts have come through the help desk providing information, guidance and psychological support. More than 50 000 students (about 30 % of those enrolled in the schools involved in the project) and 10 000 families have used it. Many of these were from non-Italian backgrounds and made extensive use of the cultural mediation service.
Future work related to Diritti a Scuola will include anti-bullying interventions aimed at improving relations between students. The project’s activities will also be integrated into general educational planning.
More information:
Official RegioStars 2015 videoPuglia Region video on Diritti a ScuolaANSA Europa-Regioni video on Diritti a Scuola’s 2015 RegioStars award"L'altra Europa" show on radio 24. At 28.22, the interview with Diritti a Scuola project manager Giulia Veneziano on the RegioStars shortlisting beginsTotal investment and EU funding
Total investment for the project “Diritti a Scuola” is EUR 140 485 130, with the EU’s European Regional Development Fund contributing EUR 75 234 327 through the “Puglia” Operational Programme for the 2007-2013 programming period.