The Sicilian Region has sent to the Prosecutor’s Office the reports, requested by the ministry, on private schools suspected of having functioned as ‘diploma factories’. “We couldn’t be more in agreement and united, as always, by a spirit of profound collaboration with the minister Giuseppe Valditara, who announced new and more rigorous rules to combat easy diplomas. We have been working for some time and constantly to bring order back.” He declares it Mimmo Turanorepresentative of the League and regional councilor for professional education and training, commenting the announcement of the Minister of Education and Merit, regarding the alleged diploma scandal in Sicily. “The initiatives carried out together with the director of the USR Sicily Giuseppe Pierro – adds Turano – were, are and will be concrete to counter the phenomenon of diploma schools and any illicit shortcut that could harm the healthy and complete education of our children” .
In essence, remediable and incurable irregularities were found and for this reason several dossiers were drawn up by ten ministerial inspectors and the regional school office, which denounce irregularities in the individual institutes inspected. The reports would have been sent to the magistrates of Palermo, Agrigento and Trapani. In some cases, the methods of carrying out the suitability exams for the leap from one year to another, for recovering several years in one and the methods of carrying out the tests to obtain the diploma are called into question. The suspicion is that facilitated tests were carried out. The case of easy diplomas exploded following a detailed report requested by the Ministry of Education from the three Regions where the phenomenon is most relevant, namely Campania, Lazio and Sicily where the department sent its inspectors. The anti-diploma factory plan, included in the ‘Simplification’ bill, already approved by the Council of Ministers, provides for the recovery of a maximum of two years in one and the presence of an external commissioner for the suitability exam. The bill still needs to pass the House and Senate.
