Valditara: from 2026 rejection for those who (voluntarily) mute at the baccalaureate

First there was a student from Padua, 19-year-old Gianmaria Favaretto, who decided to intentionally play dumb at the high school graduation oral exam, graduating anyway with a score of 65, on the strength of the 62 he had accumulated up to that moment between school credits (31) and written tests (17 in the first test and 14 in the second). Then it was the turn of one of her peers from Padua, Maddalena Bianchi, who showed up at the interview only to protest against 'the school assessment mechanisms, the excessive competitiveness, the lack of empathy of the teaching staff', as she told Corriere del Veneto. From next year, similar cases will no longer be possible. On pain of rejection. Word of the Minister for Education and Merit, Giuseppe Valditara.

Speaking at Rainews24's microphones to comment on the recent results of the Invalsi tests and the cases of the two students from Veneto who, on the strength of a score that assured them a diploma in any case, refused to take the oral exam at the maturità, Valditara announced: "Among the reforms that we are about to launch, in addition to the one on school curricula needed to strengthen Italian and mathematics, there is also a reform of the maturità. Behaviour of this kind will no longer be possible'. This means, the minister added, "that if a boy does not present himself at the oral exam, or voluntarily decides not to answer his teachers' questions, not because he is not prepared, which can happen, but because he wants to 'not cooperate' and therefore 'boycott' the exam, he will have to repeat the year".

The layout of the new exam should be the one we reported in mid June in Sole 24 Ore. The aim is for an oral exam that is less and less a mere question and more and more a multidisciplinary test. With this in mind, the school-work pathways, the student's curriculum, orientation activities, and civic education could be better valorised, in order to bring out that 'overall maturation of the student' with respect to the course of study desired by the MIM holder. And for the new regulations it could be a matter of days, if not hours.