We are a country with still extremely high functional and digital illiteracy
Rights — di Simone Santi
We are a country with still extremely high functional and digital illiteracy: it still affects one in three people
We are a country with still extremely high functional and digital illiteracy
We are a country with still extremely high functional and digital illiteracy: it still affects one in three people
- According to the OECD's Education at a Glance 2025 report, Italy still lags behind in literacy and digital skills.
- One in three people is unable to understand complex and fairly lengthy texts.
- Women graduate at higher rates than men, but access to the labour market remains a taboo.
Italy continues to produce academic excellence, but leaves too many people behind. Between digital illiteracy, low numbers of graduates (especially among men) and an increasingly precarious situation for teachers, there are many structural knots to untangle. They are highlighted by the new Education at a Glance 2025 report from the OECD, which confirms Italy's structural fragilities in education and skills. Fragilities that, if left unaddressed, risk becoming a brake on growth and innovation, while deepening social and territorial inequalities. The most serious is that one in three Italians can only understand very short texts, with minimal information and nothing to distract their attention: a low level of literacy that, across other OECD countries, affects only one in four people.
Education opportunity should not depend on family background.
Yet only 26% of young adults whose parents don't have upper secondary education end up getting a tertiary qualification, on average across the OECD.
Read more in Education at a Glance: bit.ly/3JSn17E
Yet only 26% of young adults whose parents don't have upper secondary education end up getting a tertiary qualification, on average across the OECD.
Read more in Education at a Glance: bit.ly/3JSn17E
Digital illiteracy and fragile literacy
In the midst of the technological transition, Italy is also falling behind on digital skills. And not only in schools. According to the report, 35 per cent of Italian adults have very low digital skills, unable to go beyond basic operations on computers and the internet. In terms of adaptive problem solving, only 28 per cent reach level 3 or above, compared to an OECD average of 44 per cent (the competency bands are defined by the OECD itself). Illiteracy, in short, is also digital, and this deficit weighs heavily on the labour market and civic participation, deepening the gap with, for example, Northern European countries, where more than 60 per cent of the adult population demonstrates advanced digital skills.
Setting aside illiteracy, the picture is no better when it comes to actual school and university pathways. Italy ranks second to last in the OECD for the share of graduates among 25–34-year-olds: just 37 per cent against an average of 47. The gender gap is marked — and notably, it favours women (41 per cent of women hold a degree, compared to 32 per cent of men): a figure that, however, is reversed in the labour market, where female employment rates and wages remain lower. The picture is particularly critical in scientific disciplines: only 22 per cent of Italian graduates hold a qualification in so-called STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering and mathematics), with women still a marginal presence (less than a third). The shortage of technical and scientific skills is especially alarming because it risks slowing both the digital and green transitions, while increasing dependence on foreign countries for highly qualified professionals.
Un italiano su 3 comprende solo testi brevi. I laureati sono pochi e meno donne completano la laurea rispetto alla media Ocse. E fra il 2013 e il 2023 i bambini fra 0 e 4 anni sono scesi del 25%. Lo rileva l'ultimo rapporto Ocse. #ANSA
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Precarious contracts and low salaries for teachers
And then there is the other side of the coin: Italy's school system rests on a fragile teaching workforce. More than one fifth of teachers work on temporary contracts and salaries remain well below international standards. The average salary of an Italian teacher after 15 years of service is around 33,000 euros gross per year, compared to the OECD average of 45,000. In relative terms, a teacher earns just 77 per cent of what a worker with an equivalent university degree takes home, against a ratio of over 90 per cent in France or Germany. The gap widens further when compared to school principals, who can earn almost three times as much as classroom teachers.