The minister's words, verified

Valditara opened the ministerial meeting of the Italian G7 presidency as its chair. The image of the lamp served to frame the meeting's first theme, the valorisation of every student's talents, which became the opening section of the declaration adopted the following day.^[10] At home the same idea underlies the orientation reform, with its tutor teachers and personalised guidance.

Education & Merit

The second half of the metaphor shifts from the student to the institution. It is the school — and specifically an innovative school — that is expected to supply the spark. In the declaration this corresponds to the section on innovative education and new competences, and in Italian policy to the PNRR investments in classrooms, laboratories and teacher training.^[10]

Digital & Future Education

Reported as part of the minister's account of the agreement reached among G7 partners, the sentence sets a hierarchy: artificial intelligence is instrumental, human intelligence is the end. Ten weeks later he announced a two-year AI trial in 15 classes, and in August 2025 the ministry adopted national guidelines on AI in schools that treat schools as "deployers" under the EU AI Act.^[19][18]

Digital & Future Education

"Tutti a scuola" is the national ceremony that marks the first day of school. The sentence presents the start of the school year not as an administrative date but as a civic one — an event that concerns the whole country, including families without children in school.

Education & Society

The reference is to the turnover of support teachers (insegnanti di sostegno) from one year to the next. A few months earlier D.L. 71/2024 had allowed families to request that the same supply support teacher continue the following year, with the head teacher's agreement, and opened shorter specialisation routes.^[15] ISTAT data for 2024/25 show the scale of the problem: 59.7% of pupils with disabilities changed support teacher.^[16]

Inclusion & Wellbeing

Spoken at Amatrice, ten years after the 2016 earthquake, in the presence of President Mattarella.^[11] The sentence answers a common objection to the ministry's name — that "merit" implies selection — and can be read as defining merit as the full development of every pupil, including those who start furthest behind.

Education & Merit

"Respect" is a keyword of the ministry's legislation: the conduct reform of 2024 makes behaviour weigh on the whole year, and the bullying law of the same year created a "Giornata del rispetto" on 20 January.^[12][20] Dedicating the year to respect ties the ceremony to those measures, and extends the idea to respect of oneself.

Students & Youth

The headline of the ministry's release on the final approval of Law 121/2024, which created the "4+2" technical-professional pathway: four years in a technical or vocational institute linked to two years of higher technical training.^[13] The pairing of "young people" and "productive system" sums up the reform's intent — to align schooling with the labour market.

Vocational & Technical

The release accompanied Law 150/2024, which strengthened the weight of the conduct grade and returned primary schools to synthetic judgements — ottimo, buono, discreto, sufficiente and so on —.^[12] The two sentences match the law's two halves: responsibility at secondary level, clearer reporting to families at primary level.

Students & Youth

Issued when Parliament converted D.L. 127/2025 into Law 164/2025. The reform restored the name esame di maturità, made a refusal to take the oral examination equivalent to failure and changed the composition of the commission; it was applied for the first time in the 2026 examinations.^[14]

School Reform

PISA 2025, published on 8 September 2026, placed Italy significantly above the OECD average in reading for the first time (474 against 461), and above it in mathematics, while the OECD average declined sharply.^[17] The "old prejudices" appear to refer to the long-standing image of Italian schools as underperforming. The same data also show wide gaps: in mathematics, 492 in the North-West against 437 in the South.^[22]

Europe & International