The short week at school is popular, at the Marconi high school in Parma, enrollments are clearly growing

If overall in Parma high school enrollments have dropped significantly, going from 2131 last year to 2035 enrollments for the next school yearat the Marconi high school, in clear contrast, a peak in enrollments was recorded, a clear sign of the fact that the new organizational proposal based on the “short week” was welcomed by the students and their families.

“We had a increase of approximately sixty members and, for this reason, we had to ask the School Office for the creation of three new first classes: we can also imagine that this significant increase indicates that families and students have appreciated our proposal”, observes Gloria Cattanidirector of the historic city high school.

“On the one hand, this pleases us because it confirms that we are going in a direction that reflects the way in which students approach school but, on the other hand, it worries us a little because we would not want our proposal to be interpreted by reducing it to the mere fact of the reduction of school time”.

The transformation, as the principal had already foreshadowed in presenting to families the shift towards the short week, in fact implies work that affects the way in which students and teachers are called to live the relationship with learning: “It is clear that in a high school reducing school time and having to achieve the same skills means that being at school must be particularly a harbinger of results. It means that when the student is at school he must commit his energies well to the work that is proposed”.

And, in this direction, continues Cattani, “the work will be proposed in a new way so that the intellectual commitment required can be easier, especially for the younger children, but, in any case, to achieve the high results of in a scientific and linguistic high school, the five days must be days of surrender”.

On an organizational level, the five days of lessons will be integrated over the two-year period by five afternoon returnsin the three-year period from seven afternoon returns and from the first four Saturdays of school from 15 September to 15 October.

The core of the proposal, continues Cattani, is not reduced to reducing the week but lies in working on the methodology: “It is not a question of reducing Latin, philosophy or mathematics but of working with the kids together looking for connections between knowledge, leading the students to active learning, favored in this by the possibility of having hours in which teachers work together. The greatest satisfaction is to see the pleasure of learning in the children, a pleasure that also arises from a thought that is created freely, critically and through dialogue: this is our aspiration”.

News starting from the next school year also at the high school Human Sciences Albertina Sanvitale where, having overcome an initial phase of uncertainty, the school had sufficient enrollments to start the first class of the Made in Italy high school.