60 years of half-hearted management seem to be leading to ever widening cracks in Italy’s ailing about to be reformed education system.
Epolis, one of Milan’s free daily newspapers, carried an article today with some rather startling facts and figures concerning how Italy’s education budget is spent. It would appear that education is not that important to Italy’s future.
97% On Salary Payments
That many of Italy’s schools appear to be crumbling will not come as a surprise when you learn that 97% of Italy’s education expenditure goes on salary payments.
3% On Running and Development Costs
This leaves a mere 3% for minor necessities such as daily running costs, building maintenance, training, support services, and research and development. Parent’s buy text books in Italy, by the way. I believe that part of the text book cost is tax deductible.
The total amount spent on education in Italy is around 41.9 billion Euros, with personnel costs eating up 41,17 billion, and day to day running costs being around 0.58 billion.
BMW Spends More on R&D Than Italy
Lots of figures, I know. Maybe this will help put them into proportion. The well known German car manufacturer BMW planned to spend, according to its 2006 BMW Group Annual Report, about 6.5% of revenues on R&D alone.
Yes, maybe it is wrong to compare Italy’s education spend to BMW’s R&D expenditure, but seeing as educating children is an investment in the future productivity of a country, you would expect R&D costs to be much higher. Well, I would.
Before someone points out that the education system does not generate revenues, please note that all education systems generate revenues, it’s just that they are called taxes.
Total Tax revenues Spent on Education in Italy?
If someone would like to do the calculations, I’d love to know just how much of Italy’s total tax revenues are being thrown at its education system.
Teacher Numbers to be Cut
In order to bring costs down, some 87,000 teaching places are to be cut. Let’s just hope that the savings achieved are put to good use.
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Please note that these figures do not include higher education, which kicks in once Italians are over 19.
About Alex Roe
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I’m afraid I have found that the rot goes deeper than the political shrugging off of public schooling. Did you read any of Dierdre’s discussions on cheating? Here in Perugia they recently fined and jailed some medical school graduates for sitting in exams for money for non-graduates. A couple of people blogged about paying someone to take their exams for them.
The worst thing is that Italians, when you talk to them about these things, don’t seem to find it very serious. They punished those doctors, right? What about the ones they didn’t find? Want your kid to face one of them in the emergency room? (Generic you/r)
Hi Judith,
Yes, I did read Diedre’s observations on cheating. Indeed, I have also written about the Italian concept of honesty – which is different from the UK/US concept.
And yes, it is true – cheating is considered as being ‘furbo’, but not dishonest.
As for finding myself, or my child, in the hands of an incompetent doctor – yes, this thought has crossed my mind. Actually, I fear that there are quite a few dodgy doctors in the private system here, which is worrying. And Berlusco and Bossi both went out of Italy for ops/treatment…
The strange thing is that with Italy being the head of the dear old RC church, I had expected the Italian concept of honesty to have been similar to my own. It’s not. Odd, very odd. Indeed, I’m curious to go to church and see just what the priests waffle on about.
I’d love to be able to understand just why and how concepts of honesty have ended up being so different.
All the best,
Alex