"We have decided to return, from the next school year, to understandable formulas instead of the abstruse ones introduced recently. How can a parent or a child understand that 'in the process of first acquisition' means insufficient? It's a question of clarity" .
It is the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara who confirms the innovations which will concern, from next year, the report cards of primary school children and which are foreseen by an amendment to the bill on the revision of the 'grade in conduct' in schools, based on in the work of the Seventh Committee of the Senate.
In the next few days the provision, with the amendment presented by the government, should get the green light for the parliamentary process.
The path of the bill will thus be able to begin which, in addition to tightening the rules for evaluating the conduct of students, introduces changes compared to the reform launched just three years ago with the introduction of judgments related to the level of learning achieved by students children and now considered difficult to understand.
"We are evaluating whether it is useful to add the possibility of putting 'severely insufficient'", Valditara further explains.
In essence, the intention is not to return to the grades of the past, but rather to the traditional synthetic judgment - introduced in the Seventies - with a 'scale' of gradations: insufficient, sufficient, fair, good and excellent.
The ratings could become six, if, as reported by the minister, it was deemed useful to also include the 'seriously insufficient' rating.
In 2020, however, an experiment was adopted which involved the use of learning levels for the judgements: advanced, intermediate, basic and in the process of first acquisition, a method which was however considered difficult to read.
Furthermore, it is envisaged that in all middle and high schools grades are expressed in tenths in the first and second quarters (or quarter and five quarters, according to the choices of the individual institutes), avoiding, as happens in some schools, that the grades are not put in the first quarter.
Visiting today in Alghero, Sardinia, a region where school dropout rates are high, Minister Valditara underlined that "to fight exclusion and dropout we have made important investments, I recently signed a decree worth over 26 million euro which specifically aims to create the conditions so that all children have opportunities for educational success".
"But the real investment is for a new school, with new teaching, new forms of learning and new inclusion for a school that looks to the future and gives opportunities to children and the territory", concluded the minister.
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