A 104-page guide for the reasoned choice of high school

In memory, the window for enrolling for the next school year has never been wider: from next Tuesday, 13 January to 14 February. Over a month at their disposal, which the 1.3 million students expected to enter first grade in 2026/27 can use, together with their families, to identify the solution best suited to their needs and make a truly informed and conscious choice of life as well as education. So as to go beyond the dear old word of mouth that, statistics in hand, still continues to condition so many decisions.

There is no shortage of tools to do this. And they are not limited to the open days and orientation days that all schools organise in the hope of being 'chosen'. To realise this, it is enough to log on to the Unica platform - which parents must use for their children's online enrolment by logging in using their credentials with Spid, Cie, Cns or Eidas - and go to the 'What's next' section activated in recent weeks by the Ministry of Education and Merit. Here, augmented reality and artificial intelligence take centre stage. Thanks to an Avatar, the user can land in the Metaverse and delve into the details of each pathway: high schools (including the Made in Italy pathway), technical and professional institutes, and the 4+2 sector (which in the meantime has gone from being experimental to being statutory). A virtual assistant, a 'digital human', follows him step by step and acts as a cicerone between the various courses or institutes to be explored.

The digital support just described is in addition to the other aids already in the field, which we try to condense into the 104 pages of the Guide to choosing a high school on newsstands on Friday 9 January with Il Sole 24 Ore (at one euro plus the price of the newspaper).

We are thinking of the Agnelli Foundation's Eduscopio, which since 2014 has segmented the best high schools in all Italian provinces in terms of the most satisfactory post-diploma results obtained at university or employment outcomes. A portal that, in its 2025 edition, analysed the data of 1,355,000 Italian high school graduates from 8,150 schools in three successive school years (2019/20, 2020/21 and 2021/22) and that, since its inception, has been used by 3 million unique users with 16 million pages consulted.

Not forgetting the 'tips' from the National Association of Principals (ANP), which is once again supporting us in this publishing adventure. Because in the end no one knows their school better than a headmaster. And sometimes it is good to keep that in mind, especially if you want to understand where the individual educational offer is going.