Surveys on Educational Guidance and Early School Leaving in Sardinia
On Thursday, 16 May, at 12.00 noon, in the conference room of the former Palazzina Comando in Tempio Pausania, the results of the research with which Eurispes Sardegna has set out to measure and frame the phenomenon of early school leaving on the island were presented.
The event was attended by the President of Eurispes, Gian Maria Fara, the Councillor and Vice-President of the Region of Sardinia, Giuseppe Meloni, the Regional Guarantor for Children and Adolescents, Carla Puligheddu, and the Mayor of Tempio Pausania, Gianni Addis.
The proceedings were introduced and coordinated by the Director and Secretary General of Eurispes Sardegna, Gerolamo Balata. Reports by Marisa Muzzetto, sociologist of Eurispes Sardegna, and Giuseppe Pulina, lecturer and member of Eurispes’ National Scientific Committee, illustrated the results. The conclusions were entrusted to the Regional Councillor for Education, Ilaria Portas.
Overall, the two studies involved approximately 3,200 students, attending 100 different institutes representing the different territorial areas of the island.
The research was also carried out thanks to the collaboration of the Programming and Budget Department of the Region of Sardinia, the Regional Department for Education, Cultural Heritage, Information, Entertainment and Sport, and the Regional Ombudsman for Childhood and Adolescence.
Surveys on Guidance and Early School Leaving in Sardinia
Summary
Over the past few years Eurispes Sardegna, the Institute of Political, Economic and Social Studies, has intensified its interest in the world of schools, recognising that this plays a decisive role in the development and growth prospects of the country. This means that we will be tomorrow what the current state of schools leads one to think and imagine. It means, therefore, that the two surveys with which Eurispes Sardegna has focused on a snapshot of Sardinian schools were born with the intention of understanding the present and providing indications of what the portrait of Sardinian schools and society may be in the coming years.
The two surveys were addressed to two different generational targets: students attending the first grade secondary school (what used to be the middle school) and students enrolled, instead, in the second grade secondary school. The questionnaires could be answered freely, and this was done by a large number of students who, with their participation, validated the survey. A total of 1,600 valid questionnaires were completed by secondary school students. An almost equal number of students divided by gender contributed to their completion (50.6% girls and 49.4% boys). Slightly fewer secondary school students participated in the survey: 1,558.
Aims of the dual survey
The work carried out by the institute’s researchers and analysts aimed to update the results of previous research on young students. Old and new results were also read in the light of the more general trends under way in Italian schools. Trends that say that school drop-out continues to be a worrying phenomenon, that school drop-out can be related to several causes and that there are areas of the country where the incidence of these processes is higher. It is no mystery that Sardinia is among the Italian regions the one with the highest drop-out index. The dispersion rate, to be clear, must include the many factors that make a school pathway discontinuous and often prematurely interrupted, i.e. repeats and drop-outs. Dropping out of school coincides with school failure and, as the survey of secondary schools makes clear, what is established is a dual relationship of cause-effect and effect-cause, because if dropping out is the unequivocal consequence of failure (this is the case of a student who is not promoted and decides to drop out of school for good), the latter (think of the unmotivated student) often leads, and in the long run, to ‘evading’ school.
It is therefore necessary to identify corrective measures and urgent intervention policies. One of these has inspired the research by Eurispes Sardegna, carried out with the valuable collaboration of the Garante Regionale per l’Infanzia e l’Adolescenza (Regional Authority for Childhood and Adolescence), which considers correct orientation to be a highly effective tool for combating and containing school drop-out. Guidance is what gives coherence to the student’s growth path, who understands how the school is able to enhance and strengthen the skills he or she needs to give substance to his or her life project. As we read in the conclusions of one of the surveys – the one addressed to secondary school students – “Guidance that has as its aim the prevention of drop-out and the occupational development of the study path cannot but be an active part of a lifelong learning project”. Orientation is an integral part of lifelong learning and, precisely for this reason, the questions in the questionnaires aimed to bring out the motivations, ideas, passions and expectations of the young people interviewed, because these will also mark other phases of life and not only those linked to the years of schooling.
Motivations and restraints in studying and attending school
Several questions in the two questionnaires were aimed at measuring the degree to which the students appreciate school. Among primary and secondary school students, 45% of respondents said they go to school quite willingly and 28% said they go to school very willingly; one in five students (21%), on the other hand, said they go to school not very willingly and, 5%, not at all. This means that almost three out of four do not struggle to accept their role as students. One part of the questionnaire aimed to assess the degree of self-awareness of the student’s role and the legal protections that recognise it. It turned out that awareness that there are legal regulations protecting minors was present in the majority of the students surveyed (67%), while a significant 33% said they were not aware of them.
If students aged between 11 and 14 generally show appreciation for their school experience, the same cannot be said for older students attending secondary school. There are, in fact, 46% who admit that they like going to school, while the opposite is true for 35% who said they did not like going to school very much and 8% who, more firmly, answered ‘not at all’. Summing up, in secondary schools, 43% of students showed a tiring relationship with their school experience.
Reading the results of the two surveys reveals the importance of school success, through which the student is able to further motivate his or her own determination. Among primary and secondary school students, more than half of the students surveyed consider school achievement to be “very important” (66%). Another 30% consider it “fairly” important. This leaves 3% who do not consider it very important, while only 0.7% do not consider it at all important.
School performance and the perception of one’s own success at school also matter a great deal to secondary school students. There are several factors that can influence school performance: first of all, school subjects and the amount of time spent studying them (36%), the relationship with teachers (34%) and personal attitudes (33%). The possible need to work during studies (41%), family status and the intention to continue studies at university (28%) would not influence school performance “at all”, just as the possible need to work after graduation (22%) is also indifferent to school results.
On the subject of ideas and expectations, the questionnaire data says that the students have, in general, a very clear idea of the opportunities the school could offer to be more attractive. With their answers they suggest the image of a school that has in the plan of its educational offerings many projects capable of intersecting with curricular teaching. This would mean that workshop didactics are appreciated by the students. Thus it turns out that the majority of primary and secondary school pupils (67% of respondents) appreciate the use of interactive multimedia equipment “very much” during lessons, and 29% appreciate it “quite a lot”. Only a small percentage say they do not appreciate it “very much” (2%) and “not at all” (0.6%).
Equally convinced is the adherence of secondary school students to the extra-curricular activities offered by the school. These are numerous and liked by the vast majority of those interviewed. In fact, the school today is capable of a very diversified offer, capable of recognising and enhancing talents and interests of the most varied kind: music, photography, painting, language workshops (with internationally recognised certifications), acting, sculpture and writing courses. The responses show that only one student in 10 seems to dislike them. These are among the few who, for example, did not indicate the educational trip as one of the most appreciated and requested activities.
A worrying fact concerns the discomfort that students often experience and which schools aim to address by setting up psychological counselling desks. Not many students make use of it and quite a few are unaware of the existence of the service or feel it is not active in their school. In many cases they ‘make up for it’ by consulting parents and close relatives such as older brothers or sisters, and this data – positive and comforting – documents the strength of the relationship between students and their families. Many are then fortunately those who rely on their teachers. But the two questionnaires reveal that there is a not inconsiderable number (22%) of students who cultivate their discomfort in solitude.
Speaking of discomfort, one cannot fail to mention, lastly, the perceived prevalence of abusive behaviour and attitudes among students. A comparison between survey data (especially the one on secondary school) and those of the research on Cyberbullying conducted by Eurispes Sardegna in the 2020/2021 school year confirms that the phenomenon under study continues to grow. “A comparison of the data from the two studies shows that the number of those who claim never to have been victims of bullying or cyberbullying has decreased. This figure appears even more significant when one considers that the 2020/2021 survey focused only on the phenomenon of Cyberbullying”. To be more clear, among the surveyed secondary school students, 69% said they had never experienced bullying or Cyberbullying. This leaves almost a third of the sample who admit to having dealt with them in some way: 15% ‘sometimes’, 12% ‘rarely’ and 5% ‘often’.
Summing up and necessarily referring back to the global and analytical view of the data of the two surveys, it can be argued that the final result, though still in need of continuous updates and interpretations, is that of a Sardinian school rich in resources (both intellectual and instrumental and technological) which is, however, forced to deal with problems whose solution cannot depend solely on its ability to intervene. Today, more than in the recent past, schools are called upon to interpret and understand complexity. This is also the aim that Eurispes Sardegna has always pursued and which was also confirmed in the recent publication of the second National Report on Schools and Universities.
