Although the 2012 reform had laid the foundations for a massive technological transition within Italian school classrooms (at least on paper), the data emerging from the recent fact-finding survey ofAGCM (Competition and Market Guarantor Authority) photograph a very different and decidedly static reality. Although on paper over 95% of Italian classes have adopted mixed format textbooks, i.e. which provide for the integration between paper and digital content, theeffective activation of licenses to access online materials it stops at a small, not to say ridiculous, percentage equal to just 16%. This enormous gap between real and potential use is the result of very specific structural and economic barriers that the Antitrust has brought to light.
The investigation, carried out by interviewing the MIM (Ministry of Education and Merit), The publishers el’AIE (Italian Publishers Association), has revealed an extremely concentrated market characterized by dynamics that primarily penalize families, who find themselves having to sustain an average expense that varies from 580 to 1,250 euros per school cycle. The critical issues highlighted mainly concern the poor interoperability of platformsthe limitations placed on the used market through digital license management and a discount regulations which, paradoxically, reduces competition instead of promoting it. Analyzing the Authority’s report in detail, it clearly emerges how the current system slows down innovation, hindering the spread of open educational resources and keeping the physical weight of books (and costs) on the shoulders of students and their families.
Looking further into the economic dynamics of the sector, we find ourselves faced with a sector that moves impressive figures, involving around one million teachers and almost eight million students annually. The overall value generated by the sale of new books stands at around 800 million euros per year, while the second-hand market covers a slice of around 150 million. Analyzing the structure of the offer, we note a very strong concentration of the market in a handful of publishers. This is the photograph of the market taken by the AGCM:
The market is very concentrated, with the publishing houses Mondadori, Zanichelli, Sanoma and La Scuola holding a total of over 80%.
This oligopoly situation inevitably influences prices which, although growing in line with inflation, weigh more and more on family budgets due to the general erosion of purchasing power. To complicate the picture, the current legislation establishes a maximum limit of 15% on discounts on the cover price; according to the AGCM, this limitation, initially designed to protect the supply chain, ends up harm the final consumerpreventing collective bargaining between publishers and retailers that could reduce costs more significantly.
The focal point of the investigation, however, concerns the technological barriers that caused the digital flop. The failure to activate the licenses is largely due to commercial policies that hinder the reuse of texts. When we talk about poor interoperability, we are referring to the technical difficulty of making different platforms communicate with each other: students and teachers often find themselves having to manage multiple accounts and non-communicating interfaces to access content from different publisherscreating a friction that discourages the use of digital. To complete the work, then, there are the current ones licensing conditions that strongly penalize the second-hand market and loan for use (i.e. the temporary free concession of the book), since often the access codes to online content expire or are not transferable to the second owner of the paper volume. Faced with this evidence, publishers have shown an openness towards solutions that allow reactivate licenses at controlled prices and extend the duration of accessa move that the Authority hopes will become the standard.
Another fundamental aspect on which the Antitrust has placed emphasis is the unexpressed potential of OERacronym for Open Educational Resources. These are teaching, learning and research materials that are in the public domain or released under a license that allows their free use, re-adaptation and redistribution. Together with school self-production, these resources could drastically reduce costs for families and, thanks to integration with new artificial intelligence tools, promote personalized teaching. The current legislation does not offer sufficient incentives to make these alternatives take off, which therefore struggle to compete with traditional commercial publishing.
We close on a positive note, which comes from the proposal of modular solutions: the idea is that of break down textbooks into lighter volumes or to resort to the use of QR Codes to transfer part of the contents to digital, thus reducing the weight of backpacks (which in Italy is double the European average).
