In Salerno they represent 40% of the total (in the rest of Italy less than 7%). It’s the effect of “diploma tourism”
Tuttoscuola’s analysis.
-7 days until Maturity 2024. The lean wave due to the demographic decline also reaches among those graduating. This year there will be, between internal and external (private) candidates, only 526,317, compared to 536,068 for the 2023 Maturity, with an overall drop of 9,751 candidates (-1.8%). From the 2022 Maturity to this year’s, the number of graduating seniors actually dropped by 13,361 units (-2.5%).
But the decline would have been much greater if there had not been the boom in the so-called “diploma factories” in recent years. An effect destined to last also in the 2024 state exam, since the contrasting measures announced by the Government will take effect from 2025.
It is no coincidence that in private institutions – within which suspicious ones are camouflaged – the number of candidates increased by 2,698 units last year, going against the trend, going from 53,472 in 2022 to 56,170 in 2023 (+5%). A trend that will most likely also be confirmed in the 2024 Maturity. This year too, in fact, at least 10 thousand high school graduates will move from everywhere, mainly towards the South. It is diploma tourism. They could participate, in the presence of mixed commissions, in a staging worthy of “The Sting”, the cult film with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Unless the Ministry of Education and Merit plans extensive visits by inspectors during tests in the coming weeks.
These “traveling” graduates don’t have straw hats, sunglasses or cocktails in hand. Yet what moves them can still be defined as “tourism”. A particular tourism, precisely for graduation, animated by all those candidates who every year, to get the coveted “piece of paper”, pack their bags and change region. But only for a few days. And they come back with their diploma in their pockets. A phenomenon probably unique in the world, at least in this dimension.
They mostly go to private institutes in Campania, as revealed by Tuttoscuola’s investigation last summer, which turned the spotlight on the “boom” of diploma mills and also traced a map of “opaque” institutes: in Lazio, in Sicily and, indeed, , in Campania. The enrollment flows speak for themselves: between the fourth and fifth year, the number of members enrolled in the peer-to-peer programs increased by over 30 thousand units, almost entirely in those three regions, with the record in Campania: +21,946. Yet in the state schools of Campania in the same period there was a decrease in enrollments of only -2,454 units (the data refers to the two-year period 2021-22 vs 2022-23, given that the MIM has not yet released the data for the year school now in its final stages). It can be deduced that most of the new students enrolled in fifth grade in the equal Campania regions came from other Regions. With obvious consequences: graduates from private institutions represent 30% of the total (state + private) in Campania and less than 7% in the rest of Italy. Really in the province of Salerno they exceed 40%. What is striking is that in the fourth year in the same province those enrolled in private schools are only 5% of the total number of fourth year students: from 5% to 40% from one year to the next (from less than 600 members in the fourth year to almost 7 thousand in the fifth year the following year). Very anomalous. Not only that: candidates from Campania represent just under half of the total number of graduates from private institutions at a national level. But as mentioned, very few live in Campania, they are “high school diploma tourists”.
The journalistic investigation had important consequences. It first prompted the Ministry of Education to launch an inspection plan in those regions (announced by Minister Valditara a few hours after the release of the first Tuttoscuola dossier and launched last December). A team of almost one hundred ministerial inspectors visited and combed through the documents of 70 private institutions (40 in Campania, 15 in Lazio and 15 in Sicily). A sweeping action that has no precedent in the history of school administration. The reports were delivered to the heads of the Ministry and to the Sicily Region (which has jurisdiction by virtue of the special statute) in recent weeks. The other important consequence was that the Government decided to present a bill (content of the “simplifications” bill envisaged by the Pnrr) to combat the phenomenon, now being examined by Parliament, which incorporates many of the proposals put forward by Tuttoscuola in a decalogue attached to the second dossier.
What will happen in a few days at the 2024 Maturity compared to the recent past? Not much, because the new anti-diploma regulations firmly supported by the Minister of Education Giuseppe Valditara will have an impact from the first school year following the approval of the regulations (scheduled for the end of 2024, as confirmed by the minister himself), and therefore only from 2025-26.
While waiting for the results of the anti-diploma measures, it is foreseeable that the phenomenon of easy diplomas will still be very widespread this year. Compared to the constant increase of recent years there will perhaps be a slowdown, partly due to a “deterrence effect” generated by the clamor in the media and partly to the first effects of the inspections of recent months.
But from a regulatory point of view there has been no change at the moment. In short – despite the undoubted desire of the Ministry of Education to stem the phenomenon and the decisive interventions initiated – the gates for this year retain their flaws and the horses continue to run away, you can bet on it.
Read Tuttoscuola’s dossiers on diploma mills here:
https://www.tuttoscuola.com/prodotti/maturita-boom-diplomi-facili-dossier/
https://www.tuttoscuola.com/prodotti/gran-bazar-diplomifici/
For further information:
– Fight against diploma mills. Finally the ministerial plan
– MIM’s ‘anti-diplomacy’ plan: what it involves
– this summer’s statement from the Ministry: “Regarding the Tuttoscuola investigation, let’s start the inspections”
– Diploma factories: a decalogue to knock them out
– Diploma factories. RaiTre sends me
– Maturity, boom in easy diplomas. THE TUTTOSCUOLA DOSSIER
– THE GRAND DIPLOMA BAZAR. Second episode of the Tuttoscuola investigation
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