Formula 4+2, the Italian School Foundation rewards twenty sectors with 600,000 euros

The Fondazione per la Scuola Italiana, a non-profit organisation that promotes the right to study by involving the private sector, today in Florence awarded a total of 600,000 euros to twenty chains that have distinguished themselves for innovation in technical and vocational training in the 4+2 system. The awards were presented to three institutes in Emilia-Romagna, Apulia and Sicily respectively; to two institutes in both Veneto and Calabria, and to one chain in each of the following regions: Lombardy, Friuli Venezia Giulia, Piedmont, Liguria, Umbria, Abruzzo and Lazio.

The award criteria include the number of hours spent in workshop activities in STEM disciplines or at companies; the number of UDAs (learning learning units) with an interdisciplinary character, designed and implemented in schools; specific teacher training for the experimentation; the implementation of the monitoring system for project improvement; the development of circular economy and internationalisation projects.

The award ceremony, which took place during the Didacta trade fair, is linked to the call for proposals that the Foundation promoted with the scientific support of the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research (Indire) and enables the sectors to increase investment in educational innovation, the promotion of exchange programmes with foreign schools and the enhancement of orientation activities for graduates. All activities must be reported.
"We consider the 4+2 pathway a strategic innovation for the country's system, to recover that mismatch between labour demand and supply that harms students and businesses: our commitment, starting with this award, is to transform it into a standard of excellence, accompanying its evolution through economic support and the sharing of best practices," says Stefano Simontacchi, president of the Fondazione per la Scuola Italiana.

"The special event that took place today at Didacta," says Antonella Zuccaro, researcher at Indire, "represents a strategic moment in the path of growth of the 4+2 Technological-Professional Education supply chain. The call for bids emphasises key elements for the growth of supply chains, such as organisational, didactic and curricular innovation, internationalisation and orientation. The awards covered supply chains throughout the country, according to a common denominator, namely the extensive use of enabling technologies. The 4+2, in fact, should not be thought of as a simple time reduction of the school curriculum, but of a methodological revolution aimed at transforming technical and professional institutes into true 'innovation hubs'.

Since the call for applications was opened, more than one hundred applications have been received: an important number, considering that it was a first edition, which testifies to the great need for institutions to find resources in a country where the average private contribution to schools is only 0.5% of the total investment in the sector, compared to the OECD average of 2%.
In the light of the projects submitted, INDIRE has decided to award ten additional supply chains whose experiences were judged particularly significant with its own funds.
Benefiting from the project will not only be the winning supply chains, which will now be able to receive the financial contribution. In fact, the Foundation intends to treasure the best experiences and disseminate them as good practices in order to make them replicable and contribute to the success of the project at national level.
The ITTS Carlo Grassi in Turin, for example, is involved in the 'In volo verso il futuro' project, which is structured in such a way as to make evidence and progress traceable, offering an effective method for anticipating the area's employment needs and successfully guiding students' transition to university or work. In Ferrara, the IIS Luigi Einaudi, on the other hand, based its experience on experiential learning and developed a model that favoured regular attendance, with workloads perceived as sustainable by students. At Gaslini in Genoa, the key was instead shared governance.