Vita e disabilità

Disability

School, physical barriers and support teachers are the knots to unravel

The Italian model of inclusion is at the forefront, but structural problems never resolved limit the right to study for students with disabilities

by Greta Ubbiali

2 December 2024

4' min read

Key points

Physical and Digital Barriers
Support teacher shortage
The risk of dropping out

4' min read

School infrastructures are not adequately accessible, the number of support hours is often insufficient and support teachers, when they exist, are precarious or lack specialisation. In this context, in the 2024/2025 school year, state school classrooms accommodated approximately 10,000 more students with disabilities than in the previous year, 331,124 compared to 321,185 in 2022/2023. Italy is considered a model of inclusion between the desks, able to do school all over Europe, but students with disabilities are often not guaranteed the conditions to be able to exercise their right to education. These growing difficulties can then translate into a high rate of early school leaving.

Italy was among the first countries to abolish differentiated classes in the 1970s - highlighting the central role that schools play in the inclusion and socialisation of people with disabilities - and today it is among the nations with the highest rates of participation of students with bes (i.e. 'special educational needs', which in addition to students with disabilities also includes children with specific learning and/or developmental disorders and those in situations of socioeconomic, linguistic or cultural disadvantage) in mainstream schools, reaching 99.97%, according to the European Agency for Special Needs and Inclusive Education, on a par with Switzerland and Denmark.

Physical and Digital Barriers

More specifically, according to Istat data, in the school year 2022/2023 pupils with disabilities attending Italian schools constituted 4.1% of the student population. One obstacle to full inclusion, however, is the physical barriers in schools. As the National Institute of Statistics certifies, only 40% of institutions are accessible for pupils with motor disabilities, with the lack of a lift representing the most widespread barrier (50%).

In order to provide teaching that is attentive to the specific needs of pupils with disabilities, schools can make use of specific educational technologies and aids. The most widely used are computer and multimedia devices for personalised teaching and educational software for learning, used by 41% and 31% of pupils at all levels respectively. However, supply does not always meet demand. 7.3% of students do not have this equipment but would need it, with differences at territorial level: the shortage of teaching tools is reduced to 5.9% in the North, while it increases in the South (8.7%)."

Support teacher shortage

Another sore point is the shortage of support teachers. For the more than 300,000 students with disabilities surveyed by the focus Main School Data - Start of the 2024/2025 school year, based on data from the Ministry of Education and Merit, there are just over 200,000 support teachers. To be precise, 205,253, of which 79,083 in derogation. The pupil-teacher ratio, according to ISTAT, is 1.6, better than that required by law (which recommends a ratio of 2), but there is still a strong discontinuity in teaching. Sixty per cent of pupils with disabilities change teacher from one year to the next, with peaks of 75% in childhood. 9% change teachers during the same year.

A novelty in this regard comes from decree 71/2024, the Sport and School Decree, which has provided, at the end of this school year, in view of the next one, that families will be able to request the continuity of the non-tenured teacher if they are satisfied with the relationship created between the precarious support teacher and their child.

With regard to the possession of a specialisation qualification, according to ISTAT, 30% of teachers have no specific training. Almost one out of three support teachers, in fact, is selected from curricular lists. The absence of adequate support is intertwined with school precariousness. In 2023-2024, out of a total of 160,000 precarious teachers, almost 109,000 were support teachers (68%). On the recruitment front, the government is working to transform the de facto workforce into a permanent workforce: the Budget Law 2025 has set aside an appropriation of EUR 25 million for 2025 and EUR 75 million when fully operational to cover the higher costs associated with the start of a plan to stabilise support teachers from the 2025/26 school year. Among the ministerial strategies announced to strengthen teaching support is a recruitment plan by 2025 for 30-40 thousand teachers with at least three years of activity on support behind them but without specialisation. The stabilisation will be accompanied by specialisation courses provided through Indire, the National Institute for Documentation, Innovation and Educational Research, which is part of MIM.

The average number of weekly hours of support used by each pupil is 15.3, but there is a gradual decrease as they move between school levels. If in pre-school, support reaches 20.2 hours, in primary school it reaches 16.7 until it drops to 13.4 in secondary school.

The risk of school dropout

Barriers to access to education result in increasing drop-out rates. In the European Union, only 29.4 per cent of people with disabilities obtain a tertiary education qualification, compared to 43.8 per cent of people without disabilities (source: European Commission). In Italy, according to ISTAT, among people aged 25 and over, 56.8% of people with disabilities have at least a high school diploma (compared to 78% of people without). 40.7% have an elementary or middle school licence. Finally, there is a 2.4% of persons with disabilities who do not have any educational qualification.