Long school holidays in Italy expose inequalities and clinging to traditions

July 2, 2022

Robert

In the month of May, the excitement begins between mothers and fathers in Italy, who wonder what to do with their children during the three months of summer school holidays, between June and September in the northern hemisphere.

There are families that can count on their grandparents’ house, others that resort to paid courses. And every year, there are those who raise the controversy: why is Italy still one of the few countries in the region to have such long vacations?

With 13 or 14 weeks of break for primary and secondary school students (equivalent to elementary school in Brazil), Italy is one of the five countries in the European Union with a vacation period of more than 12 weeks. Among the largest economies in the bloc (Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Holland), the only one. In this group, attention is drawn to the asymmetry with Germans and Dutch, who stop for six weeks.

Not that Italians study less. The school calendar in the country, next to that of Denmark, is the one with the most school days, 200 per year. The difference is that the others spread smaller breaks throughout the year, without concentrating almost everything on the summer. As in the São Paulo state network, which also has 200 school days, a six-week break in the summer, a shorter break in the winter and recess in the fall and spring. A model that, according to economists, brings more benefits to students and families.

Benchmark studies of the “summer learning loss” phenomenon come from the United States, where there are between 10 and 11 weeks off in the summer. Published in 2020 in the American Educational Research Journal, a survey dedicated to understanding the effect of the summer break on inequality in school performance found that, between first and eighth grade, a student, in general, misses 17% to 34% of learning gains of the year during the holidays.

“The long summer break deteriorates the learning process of students at all school levels,” he tells Sheet Giuseppe Sorrenti, professor of microeconomics at the University of Amsterdam. According to him, while minors tend to have a flattening of the learning curve, teenagers suffer a fall, losing cognitive skills, measures in mathematics and language.

The effect tends to be greater in the poorer social classes, where families have fewer resources and time available for their children. In Milan, in northern Italy, the most industrialized and richest region in the country, a week of summer school, in which the child spends eight hours a day, can cost between 40 euros and 350 euros (between R$221 and R$1,930). ). Activities range from immersion in foreign languages and sports to recreational labs in theaters and museums. The options offered by city halls or Catholic parishes, free of charge or at more affordable prices, have limited and highly disputed places.

“It is easy to deduce that a family with more resources will be able to replace school with activities that can also be formative”, says Sorrenti. “This effect was observed during the closure of schools in the pandemic. The children of the richest families had a low impact on cognitive abilities, because they had, for example, private teachers and parents with more time available.”

Long vacations also focus on a historical deficiency in the country: gender inequality. Among the 27 members of the European Union, Italy has the worst gender gap in the labor market, a gap of almost 20 percentage points. According to Eurostat 2020 data, only half of women aged between 20 and 64 work, the second lowest rate in the group, ahead only of Greece.

In the country, the idea that the mother is primarily responsible for the development of her children prevails, which, according to experts, represents an obstacle in their access to the job market, with low supply, many of them part-time and with salaries. minors. For Francesca Fiore, co-author of the blog Mamma di Merda, which discusses feminist issues, “women themselves often choose jobs with reduced hours, usually with lower wages, because that way they can do the other job, taking care of the family for free.” . She is the mother of two daughters, who spend part of the holidays with their grandparents.

A few weeks ago, a blog post published on Instagram drew attention to the lack of summer activities for children with disabilities. Many followers pointed out the need to reform the school calendar, but the topic is controversial among families and unions, and initiatives coming from the political class, as in 2013, through the then prime minister, Mario Monti, quickly failed.

Among the justifications against the reduction of the summer break are the lack of infrastructure in school buildings for classes during the heat period and the low salaries of teachers. “School is not a parking lot for children” is a frequent argument of those who oppose change.

The origin of the Italian school calendar dates back to 1859, when the Casati Law implemented compulsory primary education throughout the country to reduce illiteracy. The long summer vacations were a solution for the children of farmers to be able to attend school while still working in the wheat harvest, which is still the main agricultural product in the country today. “It’s a completely anachronistic calendar”, evaluates Fiore.

Both for her and for economist Sorrenti, the explanation for the resistance to change has a cultural basis. “We’re talking about a century-old tradition, the roles of men and women, all in a country with a strong religious mark. I see advances in this debate, but change takes time,” says Sorrenti.

Fiore notes that awareness of gender parity has increased in recent years, while one piece of data is gaining attention. “In Italy, we stopped having children, we live in low birth rates. It’s a very strong silent protest.” In 2021, the country had the lowest birth rate in its history.