The General Secretary of the FLC CGIL, Gianna Fracassi, takes pen and paper and writes to the Minister of Education, Giuseppe Valditara requesting an urgent meeting on a specific topic. Read the letter.
The topic: ATA staffing, which has now become a real emergency for Italian schools.
The FLC CGIL enumerates the serious problems that afflict schools that suffer from the lack of an adequate number of technical and auxiliary administrative staff, a suffering that began starting from the three-year period 2008-2011 (“Gelmini reforms”) with the gap never filled again by approximately 45,000 personnel.
In the letter, among other things (admissions to the role, overcoming of turnover, stability of staff, transformation of the de facto staff into de jure staff) a striking fact is underlined which shows how the schools are experiencing an understaffing situation which from year to year it gets worse every year.
This is the increased number of pupils with disabilities who need personal hygiene care and assistance. Well, while, following the growth curve of the number of students with disabilities, the number of support teachers has increased correspondingly – something sacrosanct and which indeed calls for the hiring of this teaching group – the same is not the case for the staff ATA, which continues to stagnate at the drastically reduced number of fifteen years ago.
This is also one of the themes that were at the basis of the general strike of the knowledge sectors on 31 October proclaimed by the FLC CGIL. And it is a theme that for the FLC CGIL continues to be among those that motivate participation in the strike on November 29th, proclaimed by the CGIL and UIL Confederations, of all working categories in our country.
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Rome, 26 November 2024
To the Minister of Education and Merit
Prof. Giuseppe Valditara
Subject: ATA staff workforce. Meeting request.
Honorable Mr. Minister,
We hereby intend to draw your attention to a topic that we consider crucial.
We are referring to the issue of the insufficiency of the school’s administrative, technical and auxiliary staff compared to the increased needs that the management of educational institutions has required for some time. The problems we want to bring to your attention are the following.
The austerity choice that the Government adopted way back in 2008 for the purposes of restoring public finances hit the ATA staff with extreme severity: around 45,000 units of this staff were canceled and since then that painful cut has never been more recovered.
The service has begun to suffer, especially in terms of floor surveillance, safety, teaching support and the provision of personal care and personal hygiene to be ensured for pupils with disabilities and for nursery and secondary school pupils. of primary school.
That this situation, in the specific field of personal assistance and personal hygiene care, has become extremely serious is highlighted and demonstrated by a fact that is before our eyes: while the notable increase in the number of pupils with disabilities necessarily led to the consequent increase in teaching support staff, a similar increase did not occur for the ATA staff whose staffing is determined with parameters that do not intercept this new need for care and assistance that this innovation entails.
It is clear the enormous work that is incumbent on those staff who have to deal with such a high number of pupils in need of assistance and care. And we must not forget that even on an administrative level this complexity has significant management implications.
Another element that complicates the work of ATA staff is the process of sizing the school network. In fact, those complexes/associated offices/branches, no longer central offices, have a limited number of school collaborators, sometimes a number that is just sufficient to ensure the opening and closing of the building.
Added to this is the issue of the PNRR which is overwhelming schools in terms of workload but also in terms of impact on liquidity, as well as not yet having the specific staff available for the PNRR and Southern Agenda.
There are also situations in which, by virtue of the law (Presidential Decree 89 of 20 March 2009) which allows the activation of early attendance in nursery schools, the number of so-called early attendance is so high that assistance to pupils becomes very problematic. . In many of these situations, local authorities have sometimes taken it upon themselves to provide support in terms of staff and facilities (changing tables, hygiene material, etc.), but now less and less also due to the financial difficulties of the local authorities themselves.
Furthermore, we know that the workforce of this staff sees a very high number of temporary workers on the workforce due to the hiring freeze linked to the turnover that has been expected for many years now.
In view of the above, we ask for a substantive meeting to start a systematic comparison between institutions (Ministry, Schools, Local Authorities, Conference of the Regions) in order to set up a strategy centered, starting from the 2025 budget law, on measures such that each subject, in coordination with the others, and each for their own part, takes charge of the problem in question.
Best regards.
The General Secretary FLC CGIL
Gianna Fracassi
