Maturità 2025, from choice of material to duration: what to know about the oral interview

The examination commission is the starting point for undertaking the interview. It is the board itself, in accordance with the provisions of MIM Ordinance No. 67 of 31 March, that is responsible for organising the interview and for the duration of the various stages of the test involving the various disciplines. The aim is to emphasise the main themes of each subject by promoting an interdisciplinary dialogue. The oral test is precisely a multi-disciplinary interview where both the ability to grasp the connections between the various subjects and the ability to present them, taking into account the programme carried out and the student's overall progress, are assessed. The duration of this experience (test) will be approximately 60 minutes, with no more than five students examined per day (or block of days). There is no standard list of subjects, there are six (three internal and three external), with reference to the subjects of the address, but it will depend on the pathway that the candidate builds up during the examination; in fact, the ordinance indicates that the commissioners may conduct the examination in all the subjects for which they are qualified according to the regulations in force, including the discussion of the written tests, for which a special space must be reserved during the interview.

To have acquired the contents and methods of the individual disciplines, to be able to use the knowledge acquired and to relate it to each other in order to argue in a critical and personal manner, also using the foreign language; to be able to critically analyse and relate to the course of study, by means of a brief report or multimedia work, the experiences carried out within the framework of the CTP; to have matured the civic education skills as defined in the Institute curriculum.

Disciplinary contents, in the oral test, are important, they are the starting point; by way of example only, we can refer to the origins of the totalitarian systems of the 20th century, where the correct "reading" of the relative values and symbols must generate those competences/skills on knowing how to decode non-verbal messages, grasping the symbolic and ritual meaning of the disciplines involved. The orientation activities that the student undertakes during the three-year period must also be employed at the same time and with the same value, used towards the goal of developing knowledge, information and the ability to research it independently.

As reported in the MIM order, this year's Matura interview has a major novelty. This is the special test that high school seniors who are admitted to the state exam with a 6 in conduct, as provided for by the conduct grade reform approved last September; in fact, the conduct grade has become a requirement for admission to the exam: anyone with a grade lower than 6 tenths is automatically flunked, while anyone with a 6 must take a special test during the exam; the ordinance states that "the Class Council assigns a critical essay on the subject of active and supportive citizenship to be dealt with during the interview of the final exam of the second cycle". The definition of the topic 'is carried out by the class council during the final examination'. The assignment of the paper and indications on when and how it should be handed in "are communicated to the candidate by the day following the day on which the exam takes place, by means of a communication in the reserved area of the electronic register, which the individual student accesses with his or her credentials".

* Lecturer in Humanities Itis Galileo Galilei Rome