schools for children
in rome

lessons in english
and the alternatives

If you're moving here to live and have children, then you'll need to find a school for them. Happily, there are at least a dozen private schools in and around Rome that provide grade and high school English or bilingual education for expatriate children.

If you prefer to raise your kids as semi-italians with a full life outside the expatriate community, you may prefer to put them into an Italian state school, which is also much cheaper of course.
This is a big subject, so we're not gonna go into it at much depth here, but here's a few characteristics of Italian state schooling:
Italian children don't start school until they are six years old.
Although this is a late start, the curriculum is more intensive, ie, school day is from 8.30am to 4.30pm, so by the time kids are sixteen or so they will have caught up with British kids who started at four years old but only had a school day from 9am to 3pm.
Kids have the same class teacher for the first five consecutive years - Good for stability, but perhaps bad if they just happen to hate that teacher.
Grade school teaching is very activity and culture rich - lots of day trips and class drama workshops - (Italian kids are raised to be exhibitionists and performers) The three R's are not neglected though and there's lots of quite demanding homework.

The breadth of school subjects at primary/grade level in Italy, is impressive, certainly when compared to British primary schooling. By the age of eleven, your child will have have received quite intensive introductory levels of schooling in all the disciplines and many basic principles of science (biology, chemistry, physics), as well as some algebraic math, and even political and twentieth century history.

And with so many original ancient Roman ruins in the vicinity, there are uniqueiy rich resources for historical field trips where chuldern can expeience arcaheological study first-hand. There are also traditional activites such as Italian folk dancing, in which children may learn the double lessons of discipline in teamwork combined with old-fashioned gentle courtesy between the genders.

We were also very impressed when, on her completion of her final grade-school year, my oldest child (along with every graduating child in the Lazio and Rome region) was presented with a gift from the county - An elegant gift-box containing a very large cotton Italian national flag, a music CD containnng the Italian national anthem and five other European national anthems, and a 200-page hardback book relating the story of how the national anthem was written, together with a message of encouragement to the recipient as a young citizen of Italy. Such patriotism may sound like old-fashioned nationalistic propaganda, and perhaps it is, and yet, it's a heck of a lot better than being presented with nothing at all.

These are all some of the better things about Italian state schooling. Alas, there are a few problems as well, to whch we now turn...

some problems with
italian state schools

Italian state schools are mildly condescending towards parents in a totalitarian communistic kind of a way - Teachers have a 'we know best' attitude towards your child's education, and they discourage any efforts to meet with them unless it's on their terms and at their convenience. They don't let you keep your child's report card unless you photocopy it yourself at your own expense. You're only allowed to keep the original for a week or so, and then you must return it, as it's 'state property'. The report card itself is printed on official stationary and signed, countersigned and rubberstamped by regional inspectors in a typical display of po-faced Italian bureaucracy.
In spite of this administrative strictness though, the day to day running of schools is surprisingly sloppy and untidy - Stray dogs (which are many) are allowed to roam free in the school grounds, defecating and shedding fleas, and the caretaker/janitor at our local school is a convicted drug dealer. Dangerous srubbishs of building and demolition debris and rubbish that blows in from the street is allowed to pile up in quiet corners or the building's exterior and playground and is not swept away from one month to the next.

This photograph of a repair made to a small gymnasium hurdle in my children's Italian state grade (primary) school in Rome illustrates much that is wrong with Italian state schooling, and perhaps, in some measure with Italy in general. Firstly, an obvious lack of funds for new equipment. We believe that the money for public facilities such as schools is in fact there, but is syphoned off by corrupt local politicians before it ever gets down to the grass roots where it is needed.
Secondly, a lack of intelligence or aptitude for the job by the people actually employed in the educational field, even at the janitorial-end of things. By any standards of mechanical and engineering knowledge, this repair is a bad job. Not only will the join still be weak and prone to break again, but it is in fact more dangerous now than before, for the sharp-edged metal brackets and screws used to effect the repair could now inflict quite a serious wound on any child unlucky enough to fall on this hurdle and break it again.
Obviously this repair was seen as a quick, cheap way of doing the job, yet for almost the same money, an entirely new shaft of wood could have been cut, shaped and painted to make a safe, strong and nice-lookng repair as good as new. However the chosen repair method demonstrates uncaring, rushed and unintelligent workmanship by a school janitor who does not even understand basic woodworking skills, or care about child health and safety.
Thirdly, teaching staff themselves have evidently not noticed this inferior and dangerous workmanship, or if they have, they do not care.
In general, it's the buggy little things in Italy such as this that illustrate the greater sickness in society, and in particular, the bureaucratic, public service end of things. Italian politicians and public servants promise much, yet deliver little, and the little that they do deliver is often defective.
In institutions such as schools, where children's little characters are formed, it should be a priority of staff at all levels to demonstrate care, intelligence and the pursuit of excellence, but we see this to be lacking in our local grade school.

Our critique of this one small item of gymnasium equipment may seem an overreaction out of all proportion, yet please note, it is intended as merely a single ilustration of what many Americans may perceive as a greater problem with Italian state schooling, just one poignant item in a whole catalogue of problems too numerous to list and discuss here, all rather sad counterpoints to the wel-meaning and idealistic graduation gift of national flag and anthem CD.

Parents have to buy all their children's notebooks and are continually requested to donate paper, glue, staples, chalk and other stationary materials to the school. Children are not given lockers or flip-top desks with storage space, so must carry their entire, very heavy collection of workbooks back and forth to school in their rucksacks (remember, these are only little children aged six to ten) Any messages or circulars sent from the school to parent have to be copied down by the children themselves in a special notebook - It's obviously too much trouble for the school to purchase or use a photocopier. It's shockingly shoddy and inefficient, demeaning to the children themselves in a way that conditions them from formative yeas to expect, (and to give), only second best in commercial service or business, and is overlaid with an insultingly Big-Brother flavoured regime that little values parental input.

There is often no toilet paper, no soap, and either soiled or no hand-towels at all in the children's lavatories.

Most Italian mothers don't work. Coincidentally, all parent/teacher meetings are held at around five pm, and are thus concluded long before any working parent can commute back home from the city to the school. Thus, these meetings are only ever attended by a gaggle of non-professional mothers who spend the time in gossiping small-talk and offer no real resistance or constructive criticism of the school's policies. How very convenient for the school… Yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice.

We are on the whole very pleased, impressed even, with the academic standards of Italian state schools, but we feel this is sadly let down, perhaps even undermined in part, by the slackness of the administrative side of things, and the prevailing communistic flavour of this still strongly state-controlled and archaicly totalitarian-minded institution.

...more about schools at top of this page