The question
Not whether, but how much — and for what
Italy's schools entered the 2020s with an unusual amount of money earmarked for technology, most of it from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR). When Giuseppe Valditara became Minister of Education and Merit in October 2022, the largest digital programme — Piano Scuola 4.0 — had already been designed. His ministry's task was to spend it, and to decide what sort of school the new equipment should serve.
The answer that emerges from the record is a double movement: investment in digital classrooms, skills and artificial intelligence on one side; firm limits on smartphones and a renewed emphasis on reading, grammar and handwriting on the other.
Four files
Classrooms, skills, AI, safeguards
Each file is classified by legal status. Figures are those of the decrees and of the sources cited; amounts are allocations, not audited spending.
Piano Scuola 4.0: an inherited plan, delivered
Piano Scuola 4.0 was adopted by DM 14 June 2022, n. 161 — four months before the current government took office — with a budget of €2.1 billion. A second decree of the same year, DM 218/2022, split the bulk of it into two lines: €1.296 billion for "Next Generation Classrooms" and €424.8 million for "Next Generation Labs".[1]
Responsibility for implementation — tenders, school projects, deadlines and reporting to the European Commission — fell to the Valditara ministry from late 2022. The European Commission's 2025 Education and Training Monitor summarises the outcome as €2.1 billion for some 100,000 digital classrooms.[3] The ministry, for its part, reported that all PNRR education targets had been met by 31 August 2026.[12]
Predates his ministry
100,000
digital classrooms financed through the €2.1 billion plan, as summarised by the European Commission.
Education and Training Monitor 2025
The plan is classified as historical because it was adopted before October 2022; its delivery is part of the record of the ministry described on this page.
Equipment needs people who can use it
Two decrees of 12 April 2023 shifted the emphasis from hardware to competences. DM n. 65 allocated €750 million: €600 million to strengthen students' STEM, digital and foreign-language skills, and €150 million for language courses for teachers, with 40% of resources reserved for the South. DM n. 66 allocated a further €450 million to train school staff for the digital transition.[2]
The need is documented. In the 2023 International Computer and Information Literacy Study (ICILS), 46% of Italian students tested fell below the threshold of basic digital competence, against an EU average of 43%.[3] Digital skills are therefore not a given for a generation that has grown up with devices; they have to be taught.
Teacher training connects this file with the wider professional agenda described on Teachers & School Staff.
Ministerial measure
46%
of Italian students below basic digital competence in ICILS 2023 (EU: 43%).
Education and Training Monitor 2025
€1.2bn
for student skills and staff training under DM 65 and DM 66 of 2023.
A pilot first, then national guidelines
On 8 September 2024, at the Forum Ambrosetti in Cernobbio, Valditara announced a two-year trial of artificial intelligence in 15 classes in four regions — Lombardy, Lazio, Tuscany and Calabria. Students use an AI assistant in STEM subjects and foreign languages, and the results are to be evaluated by INVALSI, the national institute for the evaluation of the education system.[4]
A year later, DM 9 August 2025, n. 166 adopted the Linee guida per l'introduzione dell'intelligenza artificiale nelle istituzioni scolastiche. The guidelines are organised around three areas — students, teachers and school organisation. They treat schools as "deployers" of AI systems within the meaning of the EU Artificial Intelligence Act, with the obligations that status implies, and they provide for a dedicated AI section in the ministry's Unica platform from 2025/26.[5]
The sequence matters: a limited, externally evaluated experiment and a regulatory framework, rather than a general roll-out of tools. Findings from the INVALSI evaluation have not been published in the sources consulted for this page, and no claims about the pilot's effects are made here.
Pilot · 2024–26 Guidelines adopted 2025
- 01StudentsLearning with and about AI.
- 02TeachersUse in teaching and professional work.
- 03OrganisationAdministration, and duties as a "deployer".
Phones out of lessons, step by step
The ministry's smartphone policy tightened in three stages. A circular of December 2022 established that phones were not to be used during lessons, while allowing teaching use with permission. Note n. 5274 of 11 July 2024 went further for primary and lower secondary schools: from 2024/25, a ban for the whole school day, including for teaching purposes. Circular n. 3392 of 16 June 2025 extended the rule to upper secondary schools, state and paritarie, from 2025/26, with exceptions where an individual education plan (PEI) or personalised plan (PDP) requires a device; schools were asked to update their rules and the patto educativo di corresponsabilità signed with families.[7]
Online harm is addressed by Law 17 May 2024, n. 70, which extended the 2017 cyberbullying law to bullying in general and requires an internal anti-bullying code in every school.[10] Its wider context — prevention, the Giornata del rispetto and support for vulnerable students — is set out on Inclusion & Wellbeing.
Circulars in force L. 70/2024
- Dec 2022
No phones in lessons; teaching use permitted.
- Jul 2024
Full ban, primary and lower secondary, from 2024/25.
- Jun 2025
Extended to upper secondary from 2025/26.
G7 Education · Trieste, June 2024
The principle stated
Under Italy's G7 presidency, Valditara chaired the education ministers' meeting at the Castello di Miramare. See Europe & International.
«Favorire lo sviluppo e la crescita dell'intelligenza umana al cui servizio deve esserci l'intelligenza artificiale»
"To foster the development and growth of human intelligence, which artificial intelligence must serve." (translation)
A balance, not a contradiction
Two forces
Equip, train, regulate
The first force is investment. Classrooms are rewired, laboratories equipped, teachers trained and students given more hours of STEM and languages. Artificial intelligence enters through a controlled pilot and a set of rules that place schools within the European legal framework.
The underlying argument is about opportunity: a school that ignores the tools of the economy and of public life leaves its students — especially those whose families cannot provide them — less prepared. The 40% reservation of skills funding for the South reflects the same concern for territorial gaps that drives Agenda Sud and the wider reform agenda.
Read, write, remember
The second force is restraint. Phones are kept out of lessons from primary school to the final year of upper secondary. On 17 July 2026 the ministry summarised its line as "fewer tablets, more reading and grammar".[8] The new Indicazioni nazionali for pre-school and the first cycle, published in January 2026, emphasise grammar, memorisation and handwriting alongside Italian and Western history.[11]
Here the argument is about attention and depth: that the habits on which all later learning depends — sustained reading, careful writing, the ability to hold knowledge in memory — must be secured before, and alongside, the use of digital tools.
Read together, the two forces describe a single position: technology is welcome in Italian education to the extent that it serves human intelligence rather than replacing the effort through which that intelligence grows.
This is an editorial reading of the measures listed on this page. Debate over the right balance — among teachers, researchers and families — continues in Italy as elsewhere in Europe.
Digital citizenship
Learning to live online
In force since 2024/25
- iConstitution
- iiEconomic development & sustainability
- iiiDigital citizenship
Digital education is not only a matter of devices and technical skill. Since 2024/25, Italian schools have followed new guidelines for civic education, adopted by DM 7 September 2024, n. 183, which replaced the 2020 framework. The guidelines are built on three strands — the Constitution; economic development and sustainability; and digital citizenship — and set out twelve competences, taught across subjects for at least 33 hours a year.[9] The national advisory council for education (CSPI) had given an unfavourable opinion on the draft; the ministry adopted the text nonetheless.[9]
Digital citizenship, as a strand of civic education, places online conduct in the same frame as other civic duties: respect for others, responsibility for one's words and actions, and an understanding of rights and rules. It is the natural classroom counterpart of the smartphone policy — the one limiting use during lessons, the other teaching how to use technology well outside them.
Cyber safety and cyberbullying
The legal backbone for protecting students online is Law 70 of 2024. It extends the protections of the 2017 cyberbullying law to all forms of bullying, requires each school to adopt an internal code and procedures led by the head teacher, strengthens the 114 Emergenza Infanzia helpline and provides for re-educational pathways for minors. Its implementing legislative decree, n. 99 of 12 June 2025, completed the framework.[10]
These measures sit at the junction of digital education and student wellbeing. Students' own perspective on them — and on school life more broadly — is discussed under Students & Youth; the prevention strategy as a whole is set out under Inclusion & Wellbeing.
What the data say, and do not say
The ICILS 2023 finding — 46% of Italian students below basic digital competence, against 43% across the EU — is the most direct international measure available.[3] It suggests that exposure to devices outside school does not, by itself, produce the structured digital literacy that the civic-education and skills programmes are meant to build. Whether the investments of 2022–2026 change that picture will only be visible in later rounds of international assessment.
The money
Digital education budget lines
Principal PNRR-funded allocations for digital classrooms, skills and training. The three 2022 lines predate the Valditara ministry but were implemented during it.[1][2]
| Line | Instrument | Allocation (€) | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| Piano Scuola 4.0 (overall plan) | DM 14 Jun 2022, n. 161 | 2.1bn | Predates the ministry · implemented 2022–26 |
| Next Generation Classrooms | DM 218/2022 | 1.296bn | Adopted 2022 · implemented 2022–26 |
| Next Generation Labs | DM 218/2022 | 424.8m | Adopted 2022 · implemented 2022–26 |
| STEM, digital and language skills for students | DM 12 Apr 2023, n. 65 | 600m | Ministerial measure |
| Language courses for teachers | DM 12 Apr 2023, n. 65 | 150m | Ministerial measure |
| Digital-transition training for school staff | DM 12 Apr 2023, n. 66 | 450m | Ministerial measure |
The classroom and laboratory lines (€1.296bn and €424.8m) are components of the €2.1bn Piano Scuola 4.0 and should not be added to it.
Under DM 65/2023, 40% of skills resources were reserved for schools in the South.[2]
Funding for school buildings, nurseries and early school leaving is covered on Ministerial Role and School Reform.
Sources & references (12)
- Orizzonte Scuola — "Piano Scuola 4.0: tutte le misure finanziate, le procedure di attuazione da parte delle scuole"
- Orizzonte Scuola — STEM subjects and staff training: €1.2 billion from the ministry (DM 65 and DM 66 of 12 April 2023)
- European Commission — Education and Training Monitor 2025: Italy
- LaPresse — "Scuola, Valditara: sperimentazione IA in 15 classi", 8 September 2024
- Sinergie di Scuola — Linee guida per l'introduzione dell'intelligenza artificiale nelle scuole (DM 9 August 2025, n. 166)
- ANSA — G7 Education, Trieste: agreement on valorising young people's talents, 28 June 2024
- MIM — Circolare n. 3392 del 16 giugno 2025 (smartphones in upper secondary schools)
- MIM — homepage news item, 17 July 2026: "fewer tablets, more reading and grammar"
- USR Sardegna (MIM) — Le nuove Linee guida per l'insegnamento dell'educazione civica, DM n. 183 del 7 settembre 2024
- Orizzonte Scuola — Bullying and cyberbullying: internal code in every school and the Giornata del rispetto (L. 70/2024)
- MIM (USR Campania) — DM n. 221/2025, Regolamento recante Indicazioni nazionali per il curricolo della scuola dell'infanzia e del primo ciclo
- Orizzonte Scuola — "Valditara: tutti i target PNRR superati"
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