State-compulsory education in Italy is free by constitutional right. In practice, the State guarantees the system's operation, building maintenance, equipment, and the salaries of teachers and staff. And yet, the cost of books, stationery, personal devices, transport, school trips and canteen meals remains the responsibility of families.

Books are by far the most significant expense. The Italian school system provides that in primary school, textbooks are supplied free of charge by the local municipality through book vouchers. In middle and high school, however, it is the school that selects the books and the family that buys them. The mechanism is straightforward: by spring, the board of teachers votes on textbook adoptions and communicates them to families, who then make their purchases in September. State subsidies for these costs do exist, but for now they remain highly selective and fragmented. The Ministero dell'istruzione e del merito has allocated a substantial sum for 2026/2027 (around 139 million euros), but has earmarked it exclusively for the least well-off families with an ISEE income below €15,493.71, leaving the middle class out in the cold. Moreover, the system delegates everything to the regions, which end up managing the funds and support measures with varying timescales and methods.

There is a problem with school textbooks

This year, each student will spend an average of €673.60 on school supplies (2.3 per cent more than in 2025), and €683.38 on textbooks. On top of that come the costs of any dictionaries, technology devices and subscriptions — from computers to webcams to basic software. All told, a new middle school student should expect to spend an average of €1,235.21, while a new high school student faces an average outlay of €1,478.75, according to the latest data from Federconsumatori.

The anomaly, however, has a very precise cause. The latest data from the AGCM survey (Italy's competition and market authority) show that every year, 35 per cent of new textbook adoptions in middle and high schools change after just the first year of a new school cycle. We are talking about one book in three being replaced from one year to the next at each cycle's starting year. This makes it complicated even to pass books down between siblings or buy second-hand copies. Families with several children — who could benefit most from reuse — are in fact the ones most penalised by this constant turnover. And the way the system currently works, it amplifies economic and social divides, because students from families with very different incomes can sit side by side in the same classroom. This is how school stops functioning as a social lift.

Building a new model of schooling

An alternative is possible — and perhaps more than one. A first interesting model is the French one, where middle schools operate somewhat like libraries. It is a system of free loan, in which the State pays for the textbooks and lends them to students, who must return them at the end of the year. The same manual then passes from student to student, year after year — until there is a structural curriculum change or significant damage to the book. A well-established system that has been running since 1985.

Then there is Estonia, which has bet on a free public digital solution. The Estonian project began in 2012 when the country launched the ProgeTiger programme to strengthen digital literacy among teachers and students, before rolling out in 2016 the online library e-Koolikott, offering the full range of primary and secondary school resources in digital format. The textbook requirement remains, but since 2015 Estonian law has required all new textbooks to be made available in digital format as well.

Caution is needed, however. Digitalising schools and shifting students' education onto tablets can be as far-sighted a move as it is short-sighted. Short-sighted to the extent that the value of printed materials, handwriting and — above all — the complexity of a school's digital infrastructure are overlooked. Sweden knows this all too well: a combination of factors — the pandemic, a rise in students who are not native Swedish speakers, and ill-prepared teachers — contributed to a doubling over twenty years (from 2002 to 2022) in the number of students lacking minimum reading comprehension skills.

Should we abolish printed textbooks?

Infrastructure is precisely Italy's weak point. The digital option, however straightforward it may seem at first glance, requires extensive planning — starting with the spaces students actually inhabit. Those spaces, meaning schools, still have serious shortcomings in Italy today. Take computer rooms: data from Openpolis show that the presence of at least one computer room is reported for only 35.7 per cent of school buildings on average, while in 35.4 per cent of cases the data is unavailable, and in the remaining 28.9 per cent there is simply no computer room at all. This trend is more pronounced in historically disadvantaged areas, such as those in central and southern Italy, but it also affects Lazio, which sits at the bottom of the rankings for declared computer rooms.

In these conditions, a rushed digitalisation would risk widening the gap between those who have devices and internet access at home and those who do not. The answer is not to abolish books, but to move beyond the idea that every family must buy them from scratch each year. Whether the solution comes from a free public digital alternative or from a loan system on the French model matters little. What matters is simply that it happens.