What does the Italian school need after Covid-19?
The COVID-19 emergency has suddenly redefined the habits and lifestyles of everyone, worldwide. In Italy, one of the first countries to be affected, there are about 10 million girls, boys and adolescents who are suffering on their own skin the disastrous consequences of this health crisis. UNICEF is seriously concerned about the impact that the pandemic is having, so it asks the government that access to education, health services and protection be safeguarded and guaranteed for all. children and adolescents, including during emergencies and post-emergencies.
Why it is urgent to implement a repayment plan at national level
The routine of children and adolescents has been upset in this period, with the closure of schools, isolation at home, the lack of outdoor activities and moments of socializing with friends. In some cases the children have witnessed the disease and the sudden loss of close people.These situations can cause, and in many cases have already caused, problems that compromise health and physical and mental well-being, especially in situations of social and cultural marginalization, or in certain conditions of disability.
Furthermore, in the field of education, the current situation has put a strain on the school system, aggravating already existing criticalities. It is necessary to intervene with adequate policies to combat the educational inequality and the social gap that are increasing, strengthening the partnership between schools, the third sector and the educating communities. For this reason today we are working together with the Institutions and other organizations to contribute to the revision of the school plan. Specifically, we ask to:
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• Nobody excluded
With the expression "no one excluded" we intend to design interventions to support the most vulnerable children and young people and the areas most affected by educational poverty before and after the emergency. The COVID-19 emergency has highlighted a series of disparities and inequalities at a national level for children and their families to access the internet and consequently to online teaching. In anticipation of the reopening of schools in September, in addition to health safety, a coordinated response is needed to guarantee all children - in particularly to those with disabilities or in conditions of serious family distress - to recover lost learning and to continue their studies through personalized interventions attentive to individual needs.
• Finance education
The goal is to allocate significant long-term funding to quality education, since in Italy public expenditure on education is among the lowest in Europe. Our country, in fact, invests only 7.9 % of public expenditure on education, a figure lower than that of all other member states of the European Union. This emergency has shown the consequences that a low economic investment in education can generate in difficult situations. The lack of digital training for teachers, the difficulty of accessing remote teaching devices and the general complexity of reconfiguring school spaces for safe return to school are some of the aspects that unfortunately require not only good management skills on the part of individual managers, but above all a huge economic support from the State It is necessary to create a long-term financing plan, in addition to the extraordinary one nary for emergencies, aimed at achieving quality education so that the new generations are prepared and able to generate growth and development for our country.
• Investing in educational services for children (0-6) throughout the country
The data released by ISTAT on the system of socio-educational services for early childhood confirm that in our country this type of service is an opportunity still reserved for a few children. It is necessary to strengthen the presence throughout the national territory of quality educational and school services for children from 0 to 6 years, favoring the attendance, in particular, of children who belong to families in situations of hardship and also preparing a widespread strategy of support for parenting, since it is such a delicate moment for the development of the person. This service is currently characterized by a strong lack of homogeneity on a national level; only through the definition of a national plan for 0-6 educational services will it be possible to combat inequalities by guaranteeing equal educational opportunities for all and for all.
• Activate a national plan
In such a delicate moment, it is essential to limit the autonomy of individual schools and the discretion of managers in fulfilling the guidelines and, to do so, it is necessary to activate a plan that is coordinated at national level. UNICEF asks that the methods of implementation of the guidelines be coordinated at the national level and not delegated to local administrations and individual schools, in order to favor the application, as homogeneous as possible, of the directives.It requires the definition of minimum standards and the investment of additional resources for this purpose.
• Psychological support services for all children and young people who need them
The social isolation due to the pandemic, experienced by children and young people during the months of quarantine, has had many psychological consequences, especially in contexts of greater vulnerability. For this reason, UNICEF calls for incentives to be given to the possibility of using quality forms of psychological support, upon the reopening of educational services, in all schools. It is essential that schools are able to guarantee the management of the stress and specific disorders caused by isolation and the experienced state of emergency, through specific staff training and greater structural investments, to implement psychological support measures. necessary to encourage the well-being of every child, child and adolescent.
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