School population to drop by 1.4mn in 10 years -Bianchi

(ANSA) - ROME, MAY 4 - Education Minister Patrizio Bianchi said Tuesday that demographic changes mean that Italy's school population will drop by 1.4 million over the next 10 years while stressing that this does not mean the nation will need fewer teachers.
    "In the next 10 years we will have 1.4 million fewer kids," Bianchi told a parliamentary hearing.
    "But we need teachers to have smaller classes and increase the amount of time spent at school.
    "We have to get away from the mechanical line of having a set number of teachers for a given number of students".
    He said school principals have not been sufficiently rewarded for the challenges they have faced in Italy in recent years and said the government will seek to rectify this in the next renewal of the sector's collective contract.
    Bianchi also said the government was also looking at ways to ensure the many teachers who are currently working on temporary contracts get permanent positions.
    "We have the issue of the teachers who have accumulated experience and need stability," he said.
    "Out of a total of almost 500,000 ordinary positions, we have over 200,000 teachers on temporary contracts.
    "This is wrong.
    "We are reasoning with the economy ministry on how to bring thee people into a outlook of stability". (ANSA).