The Radio 24 report

'It's not with the Caivano decree that everything is solved, we have to do the rest'

One year after the government measure, we met with the headmistress of a school in the Green Park, Eugenia Canfora

22 November 2024

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The Caivano decree turns one year old. And school leaders tell us that yes, reports to the mayor and social services have increased, but in difficult areas, in the so-called 'border schools', threats are of no use, or at least not enough. Before the decree, families who did not send their children to school at compulsory school age (16) risked a fine of just EUR 30. Now, with the new regulations, school managers have a duty to report the names of children and young people who do not show up. Families face up to two years' imprisonment, reduced to one year if attendance is one quarter of the annual hours, and risk losing the right to the inclusion allowance.

And so it is there that we go, to the Caivano that gave its name to the decree. For wa<< we went to the metropolitan area of Naples, sadly known for the rape of the two little girls in the summer of 2023, which ignited the government's attention. Prime Minister Meloni also visited the area, funding has arrived and an extraordinary commission has been set up for redevelopment and redevelopment.

In Campania, the school dropout rate is 16 per cent. In the metropolitan area of Naples, in the school year 2023/24 there were 3,340 reports of non-attendance at school: of these, as many as 727 came to the attention of the judicial authorities because, following warnings from the mayors, the children did not return to school. In Caivano alone, 112 reports were made by school headmasters.

"The government wanted to give a signal, it did what it could, but the rest is up to us on the ground. If the school is 'broken', there is someone who, when it is delivered in perfect condition, does not know how to maintain it,' says Eugenia Carfora, headmistress of the Francesco Morano technical and hotel school, located in the centre of the Parco Verde in Caivano, one of Europe's largest drug dens. 'It is not with the arrival of a decree that problems are solved. You think that a law will arrive and as if by magic everything will go back to normal. Instead we imagine laws, we perfect them with commas and dots, then you go to a classroom and you always find the same problems. It's not fear that makes a child come back to school, but the credibility of the system, the fascination that the school can exert on the child so that he never comes to say: 'I don't go to school any more'".

So for headmasters, the new regulations against early school leaving are one more tool, but they are not enough.

"The system should be changed. Children can interrupt their studies at the age of 16. So today some more out of fear come to school, but are waiting until 16 to leave. With the previous legislation when the boy didn't come for two or three days, we would call the mother, then we would call the traffic police, the social services. Then we reported it to the public prosecutor's office, which forwarded it to the services. Now that the whole process is over, a year has passed and you have lost the boy. If you want to raise the cultural level of a country, you have to send kids to school until they are 18'.

So how do you convince children to stay in school? What do you do?

"I do what others tell me is not my job. When I see that a boy doesn't come to school, I storm the family with phone calls, I go to their house, I walk the boulevards. Many I have managed to bring them back to school, but others I have not been able to convince. Because these kids need something else, synergy. I would need everyone in the neighbourhood to cooperate. I would also need the guy in the bar to say, 'What are you missing? In 2013, when I arrived, the school dropout rate was 41%: many kids on paper were enrolled, but few came. The first thing I did was to clean up. The government is right that it wanted to bring beauty and order to this neighbourhood because that is the only way people begin to believe in the State, but it is not enough. I imagine a strong school. I dream of a network of schools in the suburbs: better professors and a system that accompanies these kids until they find a job. But that doesn't give up on them afterwards either, because once you've been wounded in the soul the moments of fragility return. I am thinking of a long-term adoption of all souls. So we must make these places the best in the world, perfect, like an orchestra. We must arrive before the other state arrives, instead too many organisations work for the same purposes without coordinating and we do nothing. If a boy can't read, can't write, has no self-esteem, he can't wait to be 16 and leave school. But at 16, where does a boy go who cannot read, cannot write and has never been pampered?".

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