“Today’s initiative is on an important and delicate issue, a phenomenon that in recent years is emerging in all its seriousness and involves our future. Data in hand let’s see what impact the demographic future will have on school and education for the next decade. The picture is indeed alarming. In 10 years from today’s 7.4 million students, a figure for 2021, in the 2033/34 school year it will drop to just over 6 million, in waves of 110/120 thousand students in less every year”. This is the alarm raised by the Minister of Education and Merit Giuseppe Valditara speaking with a video to the States General of the birth rate underway in Rome at the Auditorium della Conciliazione.
“If we then add the so-called phenomenon of brain drain, it is unfortunately quite credible that – highlighted Valditara – if the demographic trend remained the current one, in 30 years we will be 5 million fewer and among these we will have lost 2 million young people. effect of the demographic trend over the next 10 years will be felt more in secondary school, where we could lose around 500,000 students; in lower secondary school, the drop will be almost 300,000 pupils; in primary school, around 400,000 pupils; in kindergarten, if this trend is maintained, the expected drop is over 156,000 children”.
Together with the alarm on the decline in students, Valditara launches that of the decline in professorships linked to that of births: “the teaching staff which is a dependent variable of students would risk going from the current over 684 thousand professorships to around 558 thousand in 2033/34. A reduction of 10/12 thousand jobs every year, but we have to give answers on this issue”.
According to Valditara, the falling birth rate “will have to lead to new criteria for the formation of the classes, it will have to lead to a revision of the criteria for the formation of the staff. It is not a question of thinking only about a mere rescue of the chairs at risk, but it is a question of proposing broader views and far-sighted that my dicastery has particularly at heart and which are under the banner of the fight against early school leaving, under the banner of an ever greater effectiveness of training”.
“Since the beginning of the third millennium, Italy has found itself facing a substantial drop in the birth rate, which has worsened further in recent years. We are well aware that the consequences of this phenomenon will have dramatic repercussions on the country’s demographic balance with direct repercussions on the economic and social. The progressive aging of the population is crucial. The increase in the elderly population will determine a constant decrease in the number of active workers able to guarantee the balance of the country’s economy and to keep the GDP level constant, thus going to threaten the sustainability of the public debt. – added Valditara – The increased life expectancy will lead to an increasingly unfavorable ratio between the active and non-active population with a significant socio-economic burden related to care, assistance and social security expenditure to the elderly causing the so-called longevity shock”.
“Italy, among the most developed countries, has experienced one of the fastest aging over the last 50 years – concluded the minister -. Our country runs the risk of no longer being able to guarantee a fundamental series of services to its elderly citizens. At the same time compromising the prospects for social and cultural development for the younger generations. For some time now, national demography has accustomed us to continuous negative records”.
