With the fall in the infection curve across many parts of the country, in-person schooling has resumed, at least on a rotation basis. The distance learning system (dad) remains on the table. What will happen in September, and what are the social and personal costs of being educated through a computer screen? The first vaccination campaign could conclude in September, coinciding with the start of a new academic year and a new autumn. At that point, what fate awaits distance learning?

The government's moves on schools

The governments of Giuseppe Conte first, and then the national unity government led by Mario Draghi, have closely tied the fate of in-person schooling to the epidemiological curve.

In balancing two founding rights of the Italian constitutional system — the right to health and the right to education — the choice to prioritise health could be confirmed in the future as well. In the meantime, what remains of more than a year of remote schooling? Is it possible to draw up a balance sheet from the perspective of social and emotional sustainability?

"You often hear people say that the period children spent at home doing distance learning was only a year, and therefore it cannot have too much of an impact on their lives. I don't agree with that at all: a year of experience for young people is a very long and very significant amount of time." The speaker is Marco Vassallo, a school and relational psychologist who has been working with young people for years in Lombardy — one of the regions that spent the longest time in the red and orange zones during the hardest months of the pandemic. The region where, in March 2020, half of Italy's coronavirus cases were recorded (16,220 out of 31,506).

"It's not just how long it lasted, but also what that year represented for them. Having stayed at home and not at school, not having been able to explore themselves in a different space. Not having been able to change their environment. An entire year in which all their roles were lived out within the same space. They found themselves being children, students and partners all in the same context. For a young person, I would venture to say that is a lot — perhaps too much."

A situation in which families are also actively involved. "Both my husband and I try to engage our children in various ways, from board games to conversation — we try to be present," says a mother who asked to remain anonymous. "I notice that their interests have diminished, they've become flatter. And my older son is as if he's become stuck in his relationships — I sense a lack of self-esteem that wasn't there before."

The social cost of distance learning

Over more than a year, no alternative strategy — from boosting local public transport capacity to investing in new air filtration systems in school buildings to installing thermal scanners — has come to fruition. It seems plausible that, should the infection curve rise again in autumn, a return to distance learning could follow.

The social cost of distance learning is difficult to measure, but that does not make it non-existent. "Often," Vassallo says, "I see many young people flattening out into the here and now — they struggle to detach from the present moment and project themselves into the future. They feel as though this injustice is limiting their ability to imagine themselves in the future."

Listen to the podcast State of School, l'impatto emotivo della pandemia

At the end of March, when the government and the Minister of Education established a return to distance learning (or did, as it is now called: didattica integrata digitale), parents and students took to the streets in 35 Italian cities. The battle of those who demonstrated in favour of in-person schooling touches on issues that go beyond the debate on the quality of teaching. They concern the risk of school dropout, the growing social inequality that generates a substantial divide between those who can access technological infrastructure and skills and those who cannot.

It also concerns the poverty that, in in-person schooling, has for decades been partly alleviated by the ability to share safe spaces and relationships in the classroom, along with the certainty of a meal in the canteen. And then, last in the hierarchy of political debate, the psychological and educational cost of the pandemic on millions of students.

Students and the uncertainty of tomorrow

"A specific difficulty that young people are facing and will face in the coming months," Vassallo adds, "is linked to the fear of not being able to imagine themselves in time." The uncertainty and frustration caused by the fact that it is others who decide about our ability to move and to relate to one another "could have a knock-on effect on the opportunities they allow themselves to explore their futures. Many of them," Vassallo adds, "think they have missed out on experiences and that they don't have the tools to make up for them, and this is creating a profound frustration."

"This whole situation," a young woman told us anonymously, "has had a great effect on seeing myself in the future, because I can no longer do it. If last year I could project myself forward, know more or less what I wanted to do, now I can't any more. Sometimes I have the feeling that this situation will never pass — which obviously isn't true — and that we'll carry it with us, that everything will be different anyway."

There is then an aspect that, according to Vassallo, should not be underestimated. "Emotions such as loneliness, sadness and apathy are amplified because they are no longer simply the emotions typical of growing up, but states of mind shared by the adult world too. Something is happening that we were not prepared for: adults do not have competent answers to the period their children are living through. And so it is difficult for young people to express and understand their emotions, because there is no one to reflect them back or explain them."

A year of pandemic is not "just" a year

The impact of the lockdown and of distance learning on the youngest, however, remains absent from political and institutional debate. On the Ministry of Education's unified school data portal — a project launched in 2015 to provide transparency and open access to data on the world of education — there is data on school buildings, school staff, assessment services and educational offer plans. What is missing is data on school dropout rates, on the exact number of days spent in person and in distance learning by region, as well as studies (even partial ones) on the psychological impact of quarantine and distance learning. These are central elements for identifying long-term costs and benefits.

Several local organisations have been working for months to fill this information and reflection gap. According to a Save the Children report, for example, in many Italian cities more than half of in-person school days have been lost. In some regional capitals, such as Bari, the days spent in the classroom for secondary schools and upper secondary institutes amounted to less than 30 per cent.

For this revolution that has upended Italian schools (and beyond), there is no specific legislation. The use of distance learning is based on a decree-law (no. 6 of 2021) on urgent measures to contain the Covid-19 pandemic (Covid-19), followed by a series of ministerial notes issued from 13 March 2020 onwards. How and how much to resort to distance learning has also depended on decisions made by individual local authorities which, as many associations complained in recent months, often closed schools and opted for a switch to distance learning even when the epidemiological curve was less severe than government guidelines indicated.

The Pnrr and the (digital?) future of schools

Much of the future of schools also depends on the Pnrr, the Piano nazionale di ripresa e resilienza submitted by the Italian government to the European Commission and published online on the website of the Presidency of the Council of Ministers on 5 May last. A 270-page document that essentially details how the 191.5 billion euros arriving from Europe to Italy to support the recovery will be spent. To this are added 30.6 billion from the Piano complementare, 26 billion for the construction of specific works and 15.5 billion from the Fondo per lo sviluppo e la coesione.

In this context, schools fall under the fourth of the six missions into which the Pnrr is structured, the one relating to education and research. It envisages investments of over 30 billion euros divided between Potenziamento dell'offerta dei servizi di istruzione dagli asili nido alle università (19.4 billion) and Dalla ricerca all'impresa (11.4 billion). Funds that will be used, among other things, in projects relating to nurseries and early-years schools, to create 152,000 places for children up to three years of age and 76,000 for children between three and six years of age. But also in projects to combat school dropout, tackle educational poverty and address school building, with the aim of renovating a total surface area of 2.4 million square metres.

If learning from home were to become a cornerstone of Italy's education system in the years ahead — if it were, in other words, to become a mode of schooling on a par with or superior to in-person learning — it would in practice represent the most radical reform Italian schools have faced in the last fifty years. From a formal standpoint, a wide-ranging, non-emergency parliamentary debate could be valuable. To give shape to this revolution.

Listen to the podcast State of School, l'impatto emotivo della pandemia