Trip to the $50,000 prize won by the IISS Ettore Majorana of Brindisi

"An approach to teaching and learning that demonstrates the fundamental role of schools in providing young people with the knowledge, skills and values needed to shape this rapidly changing world". This is how the founder of the Varkey Foundation, Sunny Varkey, justified the Global Schools Prize 2026, category 'Transformation through AI', which went to the IISS Ettore Majorana in Brindisi.

An award dedicated to schools rethinking education for the future. The Majorana is to receive $50,000 and an official badge in recognition of its innovation, impact and achievements in the use of artificial intelligence applied to education. Chosen from among three thousand applications received from 113 countries, Majorana is now among the ten finalists for the Global Schools Prize. The overall winner will be announced on 19 May during the Education World Forum in London and will receive an additional prize of USD 500,000.

What won is an innovative project that has distant roots. In the Brindisi institute, Book in Progress has replaced textbooks with materials produced by teachers since 2009. An initiative that has grown over the years and has become Book in Progress AI, a free, open-source and multilingual learning platform that runs on the school's servers using language models developed in-house. Today, students and teachers can make use of personal AI tutors and tools for collaborative content creation, with sections dedicated to special educational needs and virtual STEM labs.

"Technological innovation and artificial intelligence is a challenge that can and must be tackled in schools," IISS Majorana's headmaster Salvatore Giuliano tells Scuola 24. "By now, technology increasingly affects every aspect of our lives and those of our students. Not dealing with it at school would be a very unintelligent move. We need to address these new changes, these new challenges, and make sure that our pupils use it correctly and with full awareness. Only by doing this will we be able to give a concrete response to our students' learning".
The IISS Ettore Majorana is a state secondary school with 1,285 students. The employment rate of its graduates is 25% higher than the regional average.