Originally Posted by Lorna at Vicenza

No free bus pass.

Originally Posted by Lorna at Vicenza

Hello and welcome. There is no Ofsted in Italy and teachers keep their jobs for life whether they are good or bad. Most Italian kids end up going to their local and closest school in the same comune/town hall where they are registered as residents. There is often just one scuola materna, one primary and one middle school. Kids don't move on and out of the area until they have to choose which kind of high school to go to. The high schools are not in the smaller villages but usually clustered together on the outskirts of the larger towns and kids use public transport to get there. No free bus pass.

School isn't obligatory until age 6 but scuola materna goes from age 3 to 6 and most kids do it. They don't learn reading and writing there because the teachers are not qualified teachers - well they are but more of nursery/kindergarten teachers. At scuola materna you can choose a half day or full day until 3.30 - 4pm. You pay monthly but it isn't expensive and price will depend on whether your child does a full day which includes lunch. There is lots of play, PE and music and some pencil work, penmanship follow the lines and the squiggles etc. and your 3yr old would learn Italian quickly there and be fluent long before starting primary school at age 6 and have friends because they all have birthday parties or carnival dress up parties and stuff like that.

The other two would be placed in Primary/elementary school. The school might just put them in their proper age group class and see how easily or quickly they get on, or they might suggest putting them in a lower year class to give them time to learn or catch up. There might be another option too. RE is not obligatory at all and you have to sign a form stating whether your child will do RE or not and your decision is valid for the whole school year. Although my village isn't big, there has been a huge influx of foreigners over the last years so the school gives extra Italian lessons to those not doing religion. Half a class is in one room doing religion which is just mostly a few bible stories or colouring pictures - it cannot by law be all about Catholicism shoved down their necks - and half the class moves to another room to do Italian. When my son was in middle school, a new Chinese boy arrived and the school deliberately placed him next to Alex in class because the boy's English was better than his Italian and when he got stuck, my son would translate for him and help him out with Italian spelling.

There is a lot of Italian grammar, spelling and double letters in Italian class at primary level and it can be a nightmare, but other families have moved here before you with young kids and we're all here to help out. Even though my kids were born here and could speak Italian, they still had to learn how to do "grammar analysis" and had homework like: La mia casa è grande. La = definitive, singular, feminine article. Mia = personal pronoun singular feminine. Casa = noun singular feminine. E' = verb to be singular 2nd person. Grande = qualifying adjective. Your kids will learn that kind of stuff just as the Italians have to.

Be warned, most of the schools look like scruffy dumps. Most of them are compared to what we are used to. You might see a poster of a world map in most classrooms or some class projects on the walls of the English classroom, but don't expect lots of colourful projects in the corridors. Textbooks up to middle school level are often provided by the town hall/commune, but you'll be expected to buy and provide everything else like exercise books, plastic covers for them, pencil cases, glue sticks, art supplies, backpacks etc and a separate pair of trainers in a pump bag for PE which usually live inside the school classroom - so you end up paying for a pair of trainers your kid will wear once or twice a week what? 30 weeks or so and when they bring them home at the end of the school year in June they still look brand new but won't fit them again when school starts in September . Some teachers might demand a particular brand or suddenly they want glitter gel pens for an art project or a number 2 sodding paintbrush and sometimes you get 24 hours warning or less so every mum is at the ******* stationery store at the same time moaning about the bloody teacher. I once had a fight with an art teacher who demanded that every student turn up next week with a BLACK sketch book (after already buying the white one). The kids used one page to do a chalk picture and the black sketch book ended up useless and unused in my house for years afterwards. There was no concept of, why make each family buy a pad for 3 or 4 euro? Why didn't the teacher buy one and charge each kid 20 cents for just one page? That apparently was far too complicated and I know nothing because I didn't grow up here and didn't go to school here. One good thing though is that lots of classrooms now in middle schools have a LIM, The Italians call it a LIM. It's one of those computer, whiteboard thingies connected to the school's wifi so they can show videos and photos and music and graphs and stuff without just scribbling on a blackboard.

Fire away if you have any more questions. I have one girl who graduated the science high school in 2019 and my lad, Alex, is still in one of the technical college type high schools. I have also taught in many schools as a mother tongue language assistant so I've seen it all, as a parent and as a teacher inside the classroom and the staff room ..... which incidentally are usually as ugly and as purely functional as the classrooms are. No comfy sofas, kettles, fridges or microwaves in most of those. Well I wouldn't have expected a kettle. The teachers get the same vending machines as the factories and hospitals etc do.

There is also an older thread here called Schools, teachers and something else which was started I think when we had other families here with young kids just starting out in Italian school. It will scare the shit out of you because there's a lot of negativity in it, but every kid came out alright in the end. A lot of them moved back to the UK after their 3-5 year placement here and went on to UK GCSEs, A Levels and university with fond memories of their time in Italy.

Originally Posted by RosieFra20

I would like to do some research on schools but don’t know what information to look out for to know whether it is a good school and has a good reputation?

Originally Posted by RosieFra20

Thank you so much for all this information, it’s brilliant!
I would like to do some research on schools but don’t know what information to look out for to know whether it is a good school and has a good reputation?
I work in an ‘OFSTED outstanding’ school in the UK, so know they would have a good standard of education here (I’m admin, not teacher).
I also see that you’re not restricted by catchment areas in Italy, so would have the freedom to travel to a good school.
Thanks to your posts, I feel more comfortable them being able to cope in a state school, I would just like to find one that has a good reputation?

I absolutely know what you mean about them looking drab and dreary... I guess you just have to look past that.

With regards to a job... I was wondering how easy it would be getting a job as an English language assistant in any type of school? What qualifications would I need in Italy?

Thank you again, so much.