Childhood, adolescence: on their rights day we find ourselves talking about educational poverty

ROMA – On November 20th we celebrate the Convention on the Rights of Children and Adolescents. This date, however, is not accidental: on 20 November 1989, in fact, the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Conventionthe most ratified human rights treaty in the world, with 196 signatory countries.

Rights, however, far from being fully respected. In Italy, 4 out of 10 students still do not achieve adequate basic skills at the end of high school, 1 out of 10 abandons their studies early. The first to be affected are children who live in contexts with high levels of social hardship, poverty and poor educational and cultural offerings. The project “Give me five”, started by OXFAMtogether with many local associations, is intervening alongside over 800 students and dozens of teachers from 9 schools in 5 “at risk” neighborhoods in Rome, Naples, Ragusa, Arezzo and Padua.

Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights Day. Educational poverty – is remembered today in Children’s and Adolescents’ Rights Day – essentially means being deprived of the possibility of learning, experimenting, developing and allowing the abilities, talents and aspirations of children, girls and adolescents to freely flourish. According to a survey (the most recent is from 2022) carried out and disseminated by Save The Children, in Italy 67.6% of children under 17 have never gone to the theatre; 62.8% have never visited an archaeological site and 49.9% have never entered a museum. 22% did not practice sports or physical activity and only 13.5% of boys and girls under three years old attended a nursery.

The project in the 5 cities. With the project “Give me five” the aim is to prevent school dropout by offering training opportunities and concrete solutions to combat educational poverty and make school more inclusive. This is the challenge on which Oxfam has decided to work with this project in the difficult neighborhoods of 5 cities, characterized by different levels of poverty and social hardship, where many young people are at risk of abandoning their studies early or completing them with insufficient basic skills, facing a real “educational failure”.

More than 70% of young people under 19 don’t go to the library. “In Italy today there is still a difficulty in accessing the cultural and educational offerings spread across the territories. Just think – underlines Sibilla Filippi, responsible for the transformative education program of Oxfam Italy – that over 70% of our children under 19 never visit a library or that 16.8% do not even have the opportunity to attend shows or cultural events. They are all indicators – he added – which describe how, despite the progress of recent years, there is still a long way to go in our country, especially in many “outskirts” of our cities, where girls and boys risk being left behind because they are deprived of opportunities , training, cultural and socialization spaces, inside and outside the school”.

The territories involved and the main activities underway

In Naples in particular – where for example the percentage of students who do not achieve basic skills at the end of high school in Italian, mathematics and English (over 60%) is well above the national average and the dropout rate is 16% – the project takes place in partnership with the Orsa Maggiore Cooperative and the Pirandello-Svevo and Scherillo schools to support the school careers of boys and girls from Soccavo and Pianura, two neighborhoods characterized by a strong lack of spaces for aggregation and socialization.

In Rome, where the children who fall behind in their high school studies exceeds 12% (5) – the activities will instead be concentrated in the Prenestino-Labicano district, together with the House of Social Rights and in aid of the children of the Venezia-Giulia and Via Anagni comprehensive schools . Here, in a context where the presence of foreign families is very significant, action is being taken in particular for the integration into school of pupils of Roma and Sinti origin residing in the Villa Gordiani camp (near the two institutes), thanks to the collaboration activated with social services and the Roma Capitale Red Cross committee. Starting from this work and from the strengthening of the network of subjects active in the area, common paths for the two institutes are also being launched for the development of a shared educational pact.

A Ragusa, Oxfam work with the Saint John the Baptist Foundation alongside the children of the Vann’Antò Comprehensive Institute – for the inclusion of foreign students and to address a school dropout rate of 17.1%. A fact that adds to a worrying phenomenon of “implicit dispersion”, which involves many students, who accumulate gaps since primary school. In fact, 27.9% of eighth grade students in the Ragusa area have serious difficulties in Italian, mathematics and English, compared to a national average of 14.4%. At the same time, work is being consolidated for the development of an educational pact. in the area with the Municipalities of Ragusa, Chiaromonte, Giarratana, S. Croce Camerina and many local associations.

In the province of Arezzowhere the rate of academic delay among children in high school is 15.3% (compared to 18.3% in Tuscany), the intervention is concentrated in the municipality of Bibbiena in Casentino, in the Dovizi comprehensive institute and the superior E. Fermi. Here – to counter the lack of provision of training opportunities in extra-curricular time, of educational services in particular for children and the risks of dropping out of school especially for students of foreign origin – a new Territorial Educational Pact has just been signed with the Municipalities of the Community montana del Casentino and the local associations. A result that comes in the wake of the work carried out in recent years by Oxfam in the Municipality of Arezzo.

In Padua, In the end Give me fivein synergy with the GEA cooperative and the “Donatello” and “Briosco” comprehensive schools, intervenes in the Arcella district, where many foreign families live and where the scholastic delay in upper secondary school exceeds 17%. Here in the coming months, thanks to the creation of a network involving schools, parishes, social services, third sector bodies and also the local police, the objective will be to identify the main emergencies or difficult situations in the neighborhood to prevent the abandonment of studies .