Reform and reaction: Creating new education and training structures in Italy

Abstract

Despite concerns regarding Italy's high levels of early school-leaving, regional differences in educational outcomes and persistent inequalities, efforts to reform the country's complex system of senior secondary schooling have been repeatedly frustrated. Regarded by the left as contributing to the reproduction of social inequalities, Italy's dual-track system of academic and vocational secondary schools has been the focus of many reform efforts, for the most part unsuccessful. Recent proposals for reform, initiated by the recently deposed right-wing Government coalition, reflected a very different approach to change, reinforcing the division between the academic and the vocational in Italy'..