School: Legambiente, more maintenance but the road is uphill

In 2021, 30.6% of school buildings still need extraordinary maintenance, a figure that rises in the South (36.8%) and in the Islands (53.8%).

Only 4.2% of the schools are in energy class A, while 74.8% are stuck in the last three energy classes.

These are some of the data from the XXII edition of Ecosistema Scuola, the Legambiente report on the quality of school buildings and services which analyzes 5,616 buildings in 94 provincial capitals.

The text speaks of "an uphill road for the Italian school, which still has significant delays in the safety of school buildings and energy efficiency, accompanied by a growing gap between the schools of the North, those of the South and the Islands".

Even if in the space of 5 years (2017-2021), 59.3% of school buildings benefited from extraordinary maintenance interventions, in 2021 almost a third of schools still need extraordinary interventions.

There are "slight improvements" which, according to the president of Legambiente Stefano Ciafani, "risk, in the absence of widespread and rapid interventions, of never overcoming the chronic state of emergency".

Legambiente therefore launches an appeal to the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara and to the Meloni government by presenting a package of 10 proposals.

These are "interventions to be implemented in a short time starting from the most fragile territories and with an infrastructural gap, for a safer, more inclusive, innovative and less energy-intensive school".

"It will be essential - declares the Legambiente school office manager, Claudia Cappelletti, - to think of the redevelopment of our schools as a site for urban, social and educational regeneration, sharing everything with the local community that becomes an educating community, to implement shared paths through co-planning both in services and in the redevelopment and construction of new schools".

The allocation for extraordinary maintenance, at a national level, goes from almost 28 thousand euros per building in 2019 to around 34 thousand euros per building in 2021;

the expenditure made from 15 thousand to 20 thousand euros.

As far as ordinary maintenance is concerned, around 10,000 euros per building has been allocated in 2021, with a spending capacity of 8.4 thousand euros per building (in 2019 it had been 7,000 and 6.5,000 respectively).

In particular, the expenditure of the administrations of the South is growing, going from 2,000 euros per building to 7,000 euros.