Crackdown on ‘diploma mills’: the number of pupils enrolled in secondary schools in Campania has fallen from 33,900 to 26,900

Strict regulations to combat ‘diploma mills’, along with inspections and judicial investigations, have led to a drastic reduction in the number of pupils enrolled and those graduating from secondary schools in Campania. This was announced in a statement from the Ministry of Education and Merit, which also noted that, in addition to the Minister, Giuseppe Valditara, bullets and threatening letters had also been sent to the Deputy Public Prosecutor of Salerno and to other authorities investigating the phenomenon of diploma mills. The incident may be linked in some way to the world of ‘diploma mills’, particularly in the Nocera and Salerno areas.

In short, the across-the-board crackdown is beginning to show results in Campania. Enrolment figures have fallen from 33,900 in the 23/24 academic year to 26,900 in the 25/26 academic year. The number of internal school-leavers fell from 19,300 to 15,300, whilst the number of external school-leavers fell from 1,205 to 922. The province of Salerno, however, bucked the trend, with pupil numbers rising from 9,250 to 10,218 and the number of in-school leavers increasing from 5,703 to 6,319. Here too, however, the number of external leavers fell, from 378 to 216. The anomaly in the figures for Salerno warrants particular attention, especially given that in the province of Salerno itself – and specifically in the Nocera and Pagani areas – the Ministry has revoked the accreditation of six private schools for failing to meet the legal requirements. Minister Valditara has announced very incisive and decisive measures.

The new regulations are set out in Decree-Law 45 of 2025 and take two main approaches: on the one hand, stricter limits are introduced on the establishment of parallel final-year classes. Secondly, it is now prohibited to sit two different examinations in the same year, even at different types of school, and all state and state-recognised schools are required to adopt electronic school reports, online registers and digital record-keeping systems. Inspections have also been stepped up.