Italy Education

Every kid between the ages of 6-14 go to school in Italy. More than 90 percent of them attend public schools. Through the Ministry of Education in Rome, the national government sets educational policies and selects the school system’s curricula and books. The required schooling is followed by a three-year junior high school. After they graduate from junior high school, students attend one of a lot of different kinds of senior high schools. A lot of the schools often have four or five year programs to study. The biggest group of students go to vocational schools, science schools, classical schools, teacher training schools, and language schools.

Any senior high school graduate may attend a university. Italy has 47 public universities. This country also has a few private universities, a lot of which are run by the Roman Catholic Church. Together, the universities enroll more than a million students each year. A lot of university programs last from four to six years.

University enrollment had been very heavy since the late 1960’s. The university of Rome, with an enrollment of about 170,000 is the biggest university in Italy. The university of Bologna, which dates from about 1100, is one of the world’s oldest universities.