On Wednesday 3 December 2025, the Eduscopio ranking, curated by the Agnelli Foundation working group, published the ranking of the best high schools of Italy. The ranking, now in its twelfth edition, reports updated data regarding secondary schools (scientific, classical, human sciences, linguistic, artistic high schools and technical, economic and technological institutes), evaluating which institutions best prepare young people for university studies or for work after high school diploma. Eduscopio’s work is also useful for helping families and students in choosing their study path at the end of middle school.
To draw up the ranking, Eduscopio analyzed the data of 1,355,000 graduates of 8,150 Italian schools for the 2019/20, 2020/21 and 2021/22 school years. Specifically, the ability of high schools to prepare and orient students to university studies. For technical and professional institutes, Eduscopio also assessed the ability to prepare students for entry into world of work.
Which are the best high schools and technical institutes in Italy: a scientific one from Veneto in first position
The best Italian secondary school is the Giovanni Battista Ferrari scientific high school of applied sciences in Este (Padua), with a score of 94.5 (weighted average between the exam marks obtained by graduates in the first year of university and the credits). An exceptional scientist, because Latin is not studied here: in its place there is computer science, an increasingly essential subject for the present and the future. Then we find another scientific high school, the Juvenal Ancina of Fossano (Cuneo) and the Giorgio Dal Piaz of Feltre (Belluno).
If we instead consider the big cities, in Milan it is the Berchet to head over all the classical high schools (although the best classical one in Lombardy is the Marie Curie of Medain Brianza), and among scientists he is the Time the one with the best score. The winning linguistics is the Manzoniwhile the artistic institutes in the lead remain the equal ones Sacred heart And Ursulines. For technicians, here too Manzoni dominates for the economic direction, and the Cattaneo in the technological one. Among the professional institutes, theAmerigo VespucciThe Carlo Porta and the Gianni Brera.
TO RomeHowever, which beats Milan in terms of scores, the classical high school is in the lead Visconti and the scientific Linesboth with a better score than the two winning high schools in the Lombardy capital. The best linguistic high school, however, is the Renzo Levifollowed byAmaldi. As for the artistic ones, the equal Saint Ursula remains first, followed by Caravaggio. Among the best technical institutes for economics there isEinstein-Bachelet and for the technological one the Carlo Matteucci. Among the professionals, however, there are theAmerigo Vespucci and the Tor Carbone.
TO TurinHowever, what stands out is the classical high school Camillo Benso di Cavourwhich slightly exceeded the Gioberti el’Alfieriand among the scientific high schools there is the equal one Edoardo Agnelli. Among linguistics, however, Lo wins Spinelli. Excellent results also for technical and professional institutes, with positive post-diploma employment indices: theTOrowerfirst among technological technicians, went from an employment rate of 71 to 74%. The professional institute Planaconfirms its good reputation and goes from 57 to 64%.
Further south, a Naples the structure of excellence is the Convitto Vittorio Emanuele IIfollowed by Jacopo Sannazzaro and from Piero Calamandrei. Among the Neapolitan state technical institutes, however, the best are Ferdinando Galiani and the Sannino-De Cilliswhile among the equal ones the Modigliani and theEnrico De Nicola.
There are many cities, but we conclude by mentioning the high schools of the Emilian and Tuscan capitals: a Bolognawhere the Galvani and the CopernicusAnd Florencewhere they win Galileo and the Machiavelli.
The four-year trial yielded inferior results
In this latest edition of Eduscopio they have also been taken into consideration 2,112 students graduated through the four-year school courseintroduced by Minister Fedeli in 2017 and launched in the 2018-19 school year. To evaluate the effectiveness of this experiment, the ranking examined the results of the four-year graduates according to Eduscopio criteria – in particular the performance in the first university year – and compared them with those of their peers who followed the traditional five-year path.
The high school graduation scores of four-year high school graduates are slightly higher than those of five-year high school graduates, but this could be due to the fact that the students who chose to attend high school in four years were already students who had higher results when they were in middle school, and who therefore were highly motivated and talented in finishing school a year early.
Beyond this, according to Eduscopio, i results at university of four-year graduates “are overall inferior to those of five-year graduates both in terms of exam scores and the number of credits obtained, although less clearly”. Specifically, the results of students from 142 four-year institutions were analyzed (out of a total of approximately 190). Almost 80% of the students obtained a high school diploma, mainly in science; the rest of the graduates are divided between the two macro-addresses of economic technical (12%) and technological (9.5%).
