September, time to go back to school and (inevitable) inconveniences. If Italy spends on average almost one point of GDP less than the European average on education, teachers and families are paying the price. And among the victims of the “perfect crime” of the Italian school there are also children.

The Miur algorithm: this is how merit has been penalised for 3 years

The premise is that the Italian school system is still supported today by an army of over 230,000 precarious workers. Many of them have their contracts renewed annually, a dynamic for which we have been under the scrutiny of the EU for years, which deems this practice unacceptable. These days the “enemy” of Italian temporary teachers is also an algorithm that the Miur has been using for three years now for the provincial assignments of substitutes that has never worked. And that often penalizes teachers with the highest scores and rewards those with the lowest scores in the ranking.

“After four years of service, with a very high score also for the qualifications, I find myself practically unemployed because the algorithm skipped me” Sara, a precarious teacher, vents in an online forum. She is not the only one: “The algorithm does not go back. The score will always go down. Those who had a higher score will no longer have a chance. There are people here who after 10 years find themselves unemployed” echoes another user.

The system that assigns teaching positions to substitutes is a disaster: the Ministry admits it

The paradox is that the dynamics have been known since the system was introduced. In short, the algorithm aims to combine the requests of teachers (who have a range of schools to choose from) and the availability of schools that are required to indicate the substitutes they need. The first problem is that teachers’ choices are often made in the dark without knowing the real availability of schools. The second is that many schools upload the data late and so at the first call the system “skips” the teachers with the highest scores and starts again from where it stopped to assign the available chairs once entered. With the paradox of rewarding those with lower scores.

The system was created by Leonardo SpA and by the company Enterprise services Italia, an IT company controlled by the US multinational Dxc Technology. According to Wired, 5.3 million euros of public money were spent on its creation (the value of the tender). But after years and reports, it still causes problems, also due to the lack of data provided by schools. “It’s the fault of the politicians who in three damn years have not managed to create a system that goes backwards” summarizes a user on a forum.

In the meantime, many teachers remain at home without work or are forced to accept calls from usually shorter school rankings, earning less and being paid after months. While in many schools there is complete chaos of chairs.

Two thousand euros to be precarious and the “points competition”

But that’s not all: all teachers are required to participate in the new qualification courses of the ministry. The cost is practically double their salary and there are those who wonder how to do it. “The qualifications have become an ATM. 30, 60 credits, all certifications for a fee. I’m thinking of leaving, and forever from Italy” writes an exasperated precarious professor. Money that often ends up in the coffers of private online universities, as we have already documented in this in-depth article, with political indifference.

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To complicate matters further, there is the issue of competitions. The 30,000 winners of the 2020 ordinary competition, already qualified, have not yet entered the role and will have to make room this year for the winners of the 2023 extraordinary competition carried out with the money from the PNRR due to European constraints: in the event of failure to hire, the government risks losing the last installment of the recovery and resilience plan.

The public competition that looks like a lottery: this is how chaos risks appearing in schools in September

The same 2023/2024 competition, which is still ongoing in some regions, was designed to hire long-term temporary workers, but in fact it has been transformed into an ordinary competition that does not reward those with more years of service, but those with many qualifications that score points. With some paradoxes.

“I have a PhD from a prestigious European university and a sworn translation, but for the commission it is not enough, even if it is not a qualifying title. They ask for equivalence which is a very long procedure – a candidate for the Pnrr competition tells us – and anachronistic for a country that is part of the European Union”. All this to achieve one of the lowest salaries in Europe.

The mess of the qualifications and the “escape” of the students

To further complicate matters, there is the chaos of qualifications that the government has caused with an ad hoc decree. Last February 15, in fact, the Miur announced with a note that the qualification courses could be activated by accredited universities. Not for everyone, however: they were reserved for those who already had a qualification for a competition class or another level of education (such as primary schools), as well as for teachers specialized in support. Those who have completed this course are now in the first band to the detriment of those who have perhaps been precarious for years, but have no qualification.

Students with disabilities: inclusion must also take budget constraints into account

Meanwhile, in Italian schools there is a disability emergency. From North to South, reports of the lack of assistance for disabled students are multiplying. And for the 2024/2025 school year, at least 110,000 support chairs are missing.

But it is the educational continuity of all students that is being called into question. With the relationship between students and teachers that must be rebuilt year after year. A dynamic that penalizes the most fragile students and that alienates.

“My students still write me letters and come to visit me at home because a good relationship had been created,” a precarious teacher told me. “I know that some of the most fragile have left school despite me having worked to convince them of the importance of education. It hurts to know that you can’t do anything because, after years, you don’t have a tenured position.”

Between the ages of 18 and 24, 431,000 kids dropped out of school, stopping at eighth grade. A figure that makes us one of the countries in Europe where school dropouts are highest. And if we combine this evidence with the fact that we are the country with the lowest number of graduates after Romania in Europe, it is clear that we have a problem. Not only with our present, but also with our future.