Emilia-Romagna expands its childcare offer with a 38 million investment
The region has added over 700 new nursery school places for the 2025-2026 school year, providing its services at increasingly affordable costs
(Il Sole 24 Ore Radiocor) - More than 700 new places in kindergartens for the 2025-2026 school year and increasingly affordable costs. These are the goals achieved by Emilia-Romagna with the 38 million 454 thousand euros of resources invested, European funds from the ESF Programme. The Region - which already leads the Italian ranking of nursery school coverage - "makes a further qualitative leap, multiplying opportunities and breaking down economic barriers", as explained in a statement. With the confirmation of the more than 831 places added in previous school years and the cut in enrolment fees for more than 5,000 families (exactly 5,528), the region has reached 7,086 places financed in 231 municipalities and unions, more than a third of which (2,548) in mountain and inland areas.
"Here, where 0-3 year old education has always been the pillar of a social model recognised throughout Europe, no child has to give up the crèche because there is no room or because it is too expensive," explains the assessor of Welfare, Policies for Children, Schools and the Third Sector, Isabella Conti. "This is the direction we have set ourselves and in which we will continue to invest, and we have already done so in this first year of legislature by significantly increasing the resources to be allocated to nurseries. We count on reaching and exceeding the coverage target well before 2030 set by the European Union'.
Accessibility and expansion of educational offerings
The Region's intervention, which took the form of a call for tenders for 0-3 year old children's services (with a first deadline in July and another in September), acts on two strategic axes: on the one hand, it broadens the educational offer, increasing the number of places available, so as to control waiting lists. On the other, it reduces the economic burden of services, extending accessibility to the crèche by reducing or eliminating fees. For mountain and inland areas, the service is free of charge for families with an Isee up to 40,000 euro. In the remaining municipalities, the Region guarantees a significant reduction in charges for families with Isee up to 26,000 euro.
The subsidy is in addition to other forms of support, with the aim of making the best use of available resources and not dispersing funds: in mountain and inland areas, for example, by adding together the various forms of funding available, support is also extended to those who, for reasons of Isee, could not obtain full coverage. In this way, all children have the possibility, the Region explains, to access educational services, regardless of the family's economic situation.
Over 4 thousand new posts in the last three years
In the last three years alone, this strategy has made it possible to create 4,449 new places in Emilia-Romagna's educational services, which today can count on a network of 1,292 public, contracted and private services, distributed throughout the region. To have another measure of the regional progress in childcare services, in the educational year 2024-25, more than 38,800 boys and girls under the age of three attended educational services, or 44.2% of those of age. This was also made possible by a steady increase in funding.
